U.P. Colony (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

The fact that Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) is an area of serious and persistent poverty is unquestioned (Haber, 1935);(KISS, 1976). The reasons given to explain this poverty sound very much like the answer the old man gave when asked about the secret of his longevity. He replied, “Living a long time.” When asked why the UP is poor, the standard answer is “lack of money.” The answer is representative of the miasma that a critical social scientist is confronted with while studying UP poverty. The “explanations” of UP poverty run the gamut from “distance from markets” (Garrison, 1966) and “too many people” (Haber, 1935) to “disadvantageous production costs” (Strassmann, 1958). But “lack of resources” is never given as an explanation for UP poverty for the simple reason that the UP, during its 350-year history of exploitation, gave up a number of fortunes in fur, lumber, copper, and iron ore.

The ultimate question: why has the UP’s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States? In order to answer this question, it may be wise to abandon traditional economics and sociology. The answer may lie in an analysis of the UP’s historical and ongoing role as a colony of the moneyed interests of the eastern and lake states.

The outward signs of the UP’s colonial pattern are evident: persistent poverty, tremendous exploitation of natural resources, political impotence, lack of an integrated economy, etc. The problem, of course, is whether such a colonial appellation would be upheld by a detailed analysis of the UP’s underdevelopment. Al Gedicks speaks of the upper Great Lakes region (UGLR) as an internal resource colony. He presents a picture of exploitation in the mining sector, which convincingly points to a colonial pattern (CALA, 1974; Gedicks, 1973, 1976a, 1976b). The evidence he marshals is informative but apparently he has yet to publish a detailed analysis of the colonial patterns that existed (and continue to exist) in the upper Great Lakes region. This paper is an attempt to present that detailed analysis with respect to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula played a central role in the upper Great Lakes resource exploitation of which Al Gedicks speaks. Historically the Upper Peninsula was exploited for fur, copper, lumber, and iron ore. But the reader should keep in mind that (1) the fur exploitation covered an area much greater than the UP; (2) the lumber exploitation, while devastating the Upper Peninsula, had harsher effects on the northern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula and spread to northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin as well; and (3) the Upper Peninsula supplied the majority of the iron ore exports of the UGLR until nearly the turn of the century when Minnesota became the dominant source of Lake Superior iron ore. Copper exploitation was essentially an Upper Peninsula phenomenon.

The Colony Concept

The concept of “colony” is an emotional one, steeped in the five-hundred-year history of European expansion and exploitation. Yet, due to this same long history, the colony concept can be of enormous value to the social scientist who is confronted with the question of poverty, exploitation, and underdevelopment. It is true that the historical concept of “colony” evokes images of one country exploiting another — clearly not the case with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Yet most of the accounts of classic country-over-country exploitation sound hauntingly similar to the UP experience.

For example, Andre Gunder Frank writes of an area of northeast Brazil that witnessed a “Golden Age of Development.” Frank notes that the development was “neither self-generating nor self-perpetuating” (Frank, 1972, p. 7) and this form of growth could only, in the long run, lead to a decline in the area. This pattern of growth and decline describes precisely the UP experience. Further, we see that in this type of development, the tendency for a colonial area that was exploited primarily for its mineral wealth was a degeneration into “ultra-under-development” when the extractive activity was abandoned by the colonial power (Frank, 1972).

A clear description of this process is provided by Samir Amin in his book, Unequal Development (Amin, 1976). He states that history shows that areas that are important for the development of capitalism at the center may “experience brilliant periods of very rapid growth. But … as soon as the product in question ceases to be of interest to the center, the region falls into decline: its economy stagnates, and even retrogresses … an ‘economic miracle’ that led nowhere” (Amin, 1976, p. 238-9). The upper Great Lakes region was once the world’s major supplier of iron ore and copper, yet no thriving industrial community exists there.

Instead, these regions, in spite of enormous out-migration, have slid to the depths of poverty and unemployment (CALA, 1974). The “Copper Country” — an economic miracle that led nowhere.

Johnson, in “Dependence and the International System” (1972), gives a summary description of the relationship that reflects the UP experience. He states that dependent areas have economies oriented toward the export of raw materials, this economic system being under the control of “foreign” capital. The dependent area serves as a market for imported manufactured goods. In addition, the area suffers chronic balance of trade deficits, imports large amounts of food, suffers political dependence, and when resources begin to dwindle, the area’s economic and social well-being tend to deteriorate as well. Again, while it is true that the classic colonies were subject nation states (albeit artificially created), more recent dependency theory tends to transcend national borders.

After all, unequal development within a country poses to the scientists nearly the same questions that unequal development between countries pose. Thus the nation-over-nation colonial relationship has been reapplied to examine evidence of internal colonies, i.e. colonies that may exist within national borders. The obvious impetus for these internal colony formulations is the realization of the fact that poverty and exploitation recognize no international borders, hence, dependency /domination and colonial paradigms may do well to transcend these international borders as well.

In many cases, theorists do just that. Such theorists have abandoned the tendency to speak of dominance relationships in terms of nation over nation. Galtung (1971) bases his theory of the world dominance system on the concept of core versus periphery. Implicit in his theory is the nation-over-nation relationship, but the theory has been applied internationally as well (Gilbert and Harris, 1978).

Generally, theorists have abandoned the term colony (since there are very few de jure colonies left) in favor of terms such as dependency, underdevelopment, uneven development, and center-periphery or core-periphery dominance systems. While the term colony was being abandoned internationally, its effectiveness in illuminating relationships within countries was being explored. Johnson proffered that internal colonies can “exist on a geographic basis or on a racial or cultural basis, in ethnically or culturally dual or plural societies” (Johnson, 1972a, p. 277).

If one is to accept most formulations, the term colony can mean anything from a subject nation or state that is geographically linguistically, culturally, economically, and developmentally distinct from the “mother” country — a tightly defined paradigm — to the rather loose and all-encompassing definition offered by Johnson in the previous paragraph.

Gonzales-Casanova: The Internal Colony Concept

The concept of internal colony presents a new dimension, which forces the social scientist to re-think traditional sociology vis-a-vis the colonial relationship and to see whether there exists within an internal colony paradigm a measure of applicability to a particular dependency relationship. First, of course, the relationship must be defined. While the colonial relationship quite possibly may be defined by as many different sets of characteristics as there are or were colonies, for this study, a paradigm must be chosen that first of all sets out a precise definition of a colonial relationship and, secondly, addresses itself to the internal colony concept.

In his paper “Internal Colonialism and National Development,” Pablo Gonzales-Casanova (1965) warns against using the internal colony concept “in a vague, emotional, irrational, or aggressive way” (p.12l). He then sets out to list six characteristics that define the colonial relationship. Gonzales-Casanova implies that few, if any, “internal colonies” would exist if all underwent scrutiny based on his criteria. Because of this skepticism, the Gonzales-Casanova paradigm piqued the author’s interest in the challenge thus presented, and the Gonzales-Casanova set of characteristics were chosen to be utilized in this study of the UP dependency relationship.

Gonzales-Casanova’s formulation has as its root the concept that the dominant power maintains a monopoly over the client region in the areas of exploitation of natural resources, labor force utilization, import-export trade, and revenue (from these activities)...