Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Origins of Secondary Industry: The Teething Years, 1890–1938
- 2 ‘To Industrialise or Not’: Economic Interest Groups, the State, and Secondary Industry, 1939–1948
- 3 Post-war Industrial Growth, Organised Industry, and the Central African Federation, 1949–1957
- 4 Secondary Industry, Changing Economic Fortunes, and Central African Decolonisation, 1957–1965
- 5 Industrialising under Sanctions: Organised Industry and the State during UDI, 1966–1979
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Origins of Secondary Industry: The Teething Years, 1890–1938
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Origins of Secondary Industry: The Teething Years, 1890–1938
- 2 ‘To Industrialise or Not’: Economic Interest Groups, the State, and Secondary Industry, 1939–1948
- 3 Post-war Industrial Growth, Organised Industry, and the Central African Federation, 1949–1957
- 4 Secondary Industry, Changing Economic Fortunes, and Central African Decolonisation, 1957–1965
- 5 Industrialising under Sanctions: Organised Industry and the State during UDI, 1966–1979
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The origins and development of secondary industry in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and 1938 need to be outlined if the clamour and debate over local industry that emerged in the ensuing years of the Second World War are to be understood. While this gestation period of secondary industrial development has received considerable scholarly attention, this chapter discusses in particular the way in which the peripheral emergence of secondary industry amid opposition from mining and agricultural interests during the first forty-eight years of the colony reveals tensions in settler colonialism.
First, there were conflicts between local and national capital and international capital. Local capital, largely comprising rural owner-workers of small and medium-sized mines and farmers, formed the base of the capitalist sector and was committed to the economic development of the country. ‘This national character of the white rural bourgeoisie’, trenchantly explained Giovanni Arrighi,
distinguished Southern Rhodesia from practically all other African colonial territories north of the Limpopo and South of the Sahara, where exploitation of resources was carried out by large-scale international capitalism. In these other territories, where exploitation was based on large-scale mining or plantation or monopoly trade, capitalist interests in the economy were not permanent but lasted until, for example, deposits were exhausted or the raw material was substituted in the industrial process overseas or some more economic source of supply was found.
Second, there was also antagonism within the settler society itself, as reflected by the continuous conflicts among the various interest groups, notably miners, farmers, commerce, and industrialists. These intra-settler relations were crucial in shaping the Rhodesian economy and politics in general and industrial development in particular. Hence, ‘the path of capitalist development followed by Southern Rhodesia’, argued Arrighi, ‘is intelligible only if due attention is paid to divisions within settler society and between economic sectors’. The conversation over the overall economic trajectory of the colony was underpinned by these differing interests. This marked the beginning of the notion of societal corporatism, as the state and economic interest groups (whose cordiality was indispensable) negotiated, adopted, and implemented policies for the success of the colonial project. The following paragraphs discuss the early foundations of the Rhodesian economy, highlighting the competing views of the different economic sectors and the unfolding societal corporatism as agriculture, commerce, and mining received state recognition and thereby achieved monopoly over industrialists.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Manufacturing in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1979Interest Group Politics, Protectionism and the State, pp. 29 - 44Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022