»Every purchase is proof that the injustices of the colonial period still prevail today: Germans’ favorite beans, the coffee bean and cocoa bean, are still grown under exploitative conditions in the former European colonies, before being shipped off for processing to Europe. Coffee beans and raw cocoa are cheap: the lion’s share of the profits is pocketed by the European middlemen and large brands like Jacobs and Tchibo, Milka and Sarotti.« Joshua Kwesi Aikins, 2004
CONSUMER SOCIETIES
The colonization of the world by the European powers began in 1492, resulting in new plants like the potato and tomato being imported into Europe and power and trade structures changing worldwide. Millions of indigenous people perished on the continent Europeans called America. Huge quantities of gold and silver were shipped to Europe. The Atlantic slave trade, beginning some time after, bestowed gigantic profits
on participating European enterprises and states. Millions of Africans transported to America paid with their lives. The slave labor on the Carib- bean plantations now brought cheap sugar to Europe.
As colonization expanded in the 19th century, states and multinational companies established more and more plantations for ever-multiplying products, such as caoutchouc for the manufacture of rubber. Luxury consumer items like coffee, tea, tobacco and cocoa were sold as »colonial goods« in similarly named stores in Europe, and rapidly came to be regarded as everyday necessities.
Decades after achieving their independence, the former colonies still suffer from the after-effects of colonial exploitation. Thus the production of raw materials for export to Europe and elsewhere perpetuates (neo) colonial relations within global capitalism to this very day.