Indigenous Social and Economic Structure in Pre-colonial Idanreland (original) (raw)
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African Economic History, 2018
This article offers new insight into the reasons for diversity in rural development and speaks to a major debate in economic history. The New Institutional Economy approach promotes the idea of long-term economic underdevelopment as a consequence of colonialism. However, this approach tends to over-generalize historical processes and over-simplify the reasons for divergence in development. Many historians have criticized such bold explanations. They stress that the diversity of local conditions and the varying reactions of people to colonialism and capitalism have resulted in different and regionally distinct paths of economic development. This article endorses such criticism and advances a complex multi-caused model in order to explain diversity in rural development. By highlighting and critically assessing several plausible explanations, this article argues that the development of coffee production in the Lake Kivu region primarily contrasted because of an interplay of differences in land availability (demography) and in indigenous precolonial landholding systems that were enhanced during the colonial period due to judicial differences (colony versus mandate).
Much has been written on how colonialists economically incapacitated Africans through wrestling control of the means of production from them. Some studies have also looked at how various Africans responded to the new order. In the British territory of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) the economic disempowerment of the Africans was through land alienation. However, the areas which have received much coverage on the subject in the country are Matabeleland and Mashonaland on the highveld. Given the economic attractiveness of these two areas to the colonialists and the resistance that the Ndebele and Shona in these areas put up, the overshadowing of peripheral areas such as the S.E. Lowveld, home to the Hlengwe is understandable. However, though the Hlengwe have attracted little more than an occasional passing reference in many studies, they were not spared from the colonial experience, especially the oppression, exploitation and economic disempowerment which other African groups experienced. Therefore, this article is primarily concerned with filling the gap created by the seeming lack of interest in the history of the Hlengwe. Information on Hlengwe colonial history was collected and compiled through oral interviews and a thorough study of archival materials and written sources. The article thus establishes that the loss of land led to the loss of economic independence by the Hlengwe peasantry whose main economic activities were land-based and that this same loss resulted in the Hlengwe people responding in diverse ways to the new colonial order. It goes on to explore the dynamics and variations of the Hlengwe response to colonial rule and exploitation. Most importantly, it establishes that contrary to what the Native Commissioners said, the Hlengwe were a warlike people. The article reveals that as they were integrated more into the orbit of colonial rule and felt its squeeze, they became more aggressive. Résumé Il existe une pluralité de documentations sur la façon dont les colons ont débilité économiquement les Africains en essayant de leur ravir le contrôle sur les moyens de production. Certaines études ont également examiné les différentes façons dont les Africains ont réagi à ce nouvel ordre. Dans le territoire britannique de Rhodésie du Sud (actuel Zimbabwe), la marginalisation économique des Africains s'est faite à travers l'accaparement des terres. Ainsi les zones ayant fait l'objet d'une attention particulière dans le pays sont le Matabeleland et le Mashonaland dans la région du Highveld. Compte tenu de l'attractivité économique de ces deux régions aux yeux des colons et de la résistance que les Ndebele et Shona ont opposée dans ces régions, le peu d'intérêt qu'ont suscité les zones périphériques telles que la région Sud-est du Lowveld (terroir des peuples Hlengwe) est compréhensible. Toutefois, bien que seules quelques études occasionnelles ont fait allusion aux Hlengwe, ils n'ont pas moins été épargnés par l'expérience coloniale, en particulier l'oppression, et la marginalisation économique comme d'autres groupes africains. Par conséquent, cet article vise principalement à combler le vide créé par le manque apparent d'intérêt pour l'histoire des Hlengwe. A travers des entretiens oraux et une étude approfondie des documents d'archives et des sources écrites, des informations ont été collectées et compilées sur l'histoire coloniale des Hlengwe. L'article établit ainsi que la perte des terres a conduit à la perte de l'indépendance économique par la paysannerie Hlengwe dont les principales activités économiques étaient liées au travail de la terre. En effet, cette perte a poussé les peuples Hlengwe à réagir de diverses manières au nouvel ordre colonial. Il va plus loin pour explorer la dynamique et la variété de la réaction des Hlengwe à la domination coloniale et à l'exploitation. Plus important encore, il atteste que, contrairement à l'idée répandue par les Autorités coloniales locales, les Hlengwe étaient un peuple guerrier. L'article révèle que, à mesure qu'ils ont été intégrés dans l'orbite de la domination coloniale et qu'ils en ressentaient la pression, ils se sont montrés plus agressifs.
2013
In this paper we estimate the level and inequality of income for Bechuanaland Protectorate by constructing four social tables between 1936 to 1964 using colonial archives and anthropological records. We present a working hypothesis that there is need to further analyze Botswana’s colonial era if we are to understand several aspects of contemporary economic structures. Our focus is on identifying the roots of post-independence high levels of inequality. We find that first of all that migrant labour to neighbouring South Africa earned well relative to domestic labour in the Protectorate, both in the formal and traditional sectors. Remittances their families back home and became an important strategy for the poorer segments of society to stay at or above subsistence. Second, the creation of a beef export sector in the 1930s brought with it new opportunities to access export incomes and starting in the 1940s this led to increasing income inequalities and a polarization in cattle holding...
The Ecology and Economic Practices of the Isukha and Idakho Communities in Colonial Period 1895-1963
Athens journal of history, 2022
The penetration of colonialism in Isukha and Idakho can best be understood within the general framework of the global imperialism of the nineteenth century, with Europe being the hub of global imperialism where the imperialists were motivated by economic, humanitarian and strategic factors. After the 1886 and 1890 Anglo-German treaties at Berlin's conference, East Africa was divided between the British and the Germans. British East Africa (Kenya and Uganda) was under the control of the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEACo). In 1894, Uganda was declared a protectorate and its sphere included the Baluyia. This same year, protectorate officials were sent to Mumias, which was by then a traders' entry-point on the road to Uganda. This paper analyses the ecology and economic environment of the Bisukha and Bidakho of the Luyia community during the colonial epoch. The paper took a qualitative approach to data collection, engaging participants in oral interviews and focused group discussions on understanding the two community practices. In what is termed an ethnographic approach, the author finds that the natives lost control of resources that were crucial in the proper management of their environments and the practice of various economic activities. This paper, therefore, finds that Land as a natural resource was alienated with forests being gazetted and animals confiscated to feed the soldiers of World Wars I and II.
Groundnuts as ‘economic crop’ or ‘wife of the home’ in Northern Nyasaland
Journal of Historical Geography, 2010
This paper examines points during the 1930s in which the colonial state in Nyasaland attempted and failed to bring groundnuts more into the colonial export economy. Nyasaland colonial officials, the Department of Agriculture, European export companies and the British Colonial Office attempted to establish the groundnut as an 'economic crop' for African smallholder farmers in the Northern Province of Nyasaland in the 1930s. Their failure was in part due to competing and conflicting interests: payment of hut taxes, reduction of millet production, improvement of food security, payment of railway costs, and reduction of migration. Farmers actively resisted colonial efforts to sell groundnuts to European buyers. The paper addresses the question: how can we understand the nature of colonial state power in relation to Nyasaland peasant agricultural practices in the 1930s? I argue that conflicting interests within the colonial state, as well as external constraints led to efforts to both stabilize and exploit the Nyasaland farmer in the Northern Province. These competing agendas helped lead to a failed effort at groundnut promotion. Colonial officials' actions were linked to ideas about gender, ethnicity and migration. Lack of colonial scientific knowledge about groundnuts, including their gendered role in the local food system contributed to the failure. The focus on groundnuts is a lens through which to understand the nature of colonial power in Nyasaland and the role of agricultural science in the colonial state. The paper contributes to broader discussions about multiple historical geographies of colonialism, the nature of African colonial states, and the relationship of African farmers to colonial states.
The Political and Economic Basis of Kuku-Yalanji Social History
PhD, 1984
This thesis is a study of change in the political economy of an Australian Aboriginal population on eastern Cape York Peninsula, Queensland over the period 1880-1980. The study focuses on the primary locus of change, the relationship between the Aboriginal social formation in the area in 1880 and the various interventions of expanding European capitalism from that time on. To characterize this relationship I use the notion of articulation. I outline the nature of the Aboriginal system prior to its articulation with the capitalist mode of production and I identify it as having had two critical elements. Firstly, there were the macro-domestic groups made up of a number of households and associated with particular camps. These were the fundamental political and economic units of the Aboriginal social formation. Secondly, there was the role played by particular individuals in defining and controlling the domestic groups and their reproduction. The conflict between ideology, on the one hand, and the constraints of the forces of production and political competition between these latter individuals, on the other, produced an internal contradiction which was a major dynamic in the pre-contact Aboriginal social formation in this area. It was also a major factor in articulation patterns post-1880. Before examining these patterns, I describe the appearance and operation of the capitalist mode of production in north Queensland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Articulation between this system and the Aboriginal one is viewed as a series of phases or periods each characterised by different features, rather than as continuous linear change over time. I describe two major periods, one of conservation and one of subordination. These periods are described by means of extended case studies of particular Aboriginal camps and domestic groups in southeast Cape York Peninsula. The first period was one in which, partly due to the internal workings of the Aboriginal system and partly due to the level of development and nature of the capitalist mode of production in the area, the former was conserved and aspects of its relations of production were actually reinforced. During the second period, the Aboriginal mode became subordinate to the European system as the reproduction of the domestic groups in the former was dependent on their relationship with the latter. This came about partly through state intervention. The thesis also adumbrates the beginnings of a possible third period of articulation. This period is not fully described as it only begins as the present study ends. It is characterised by the dissolution of the Aboriginal social formation through the breakdown of most of the domestic groups and the altered relations of production. Apart from demonstrating the beginnings of the dissolution period, the present (the late 1970s) in southeast Cape York Peninsula is shown to be the result not only of the pre-contact Aboriginal system and its dynamics, but also of the social formation of the recent past with its complex articulation patterns and periods of conservation and subordination. The thesis argues for the utility of social analysis in which change is regarded as a central concern and a normal condition, not a peripheral or atypical state for human systems. The thesis also argues for methods of understanding change which combine structure with the dynamics of process and which attempt to explain the basis of structural change as well as continuity.