Plantations and Chartered Companies: Land for Exploitation or God’s Gift?

In the age of European colonialism, land was the central focus of imperial penetration. For colonizers, land and natural resources in the tropics provided the foundation of cash crop cultivation and commodity trade controlled by Chartered Companies: The East India Company in British India, the Levant Company, the Dutch East India Company, and the Hudson Bay Company in British North America, were the prominent examples. Every European power got rich from profits on plantations and mines, earning huge wealth, in almost complete disregard of local cultures and the welfare of the local people: In addition to the British, the French colonized Indochina and North Africa, Belgium Central Africa, Dutch Indonesia and South Africa, and Germany in Southwest Africa. In Muslim lands, western imperialism often clashed with Waqf land, sacred as God’s gift; the clash has continued to this day.