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
2 - ‘To Industrialise or Not’: Economic Interest Groups, the State, and Secondary Industry, 1939–1948
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
‘We must pay due respect and praise to those industrialists who started, with few resources and with very little prospects, the development of secondary industries. They not only faced active opposition in some directions, but they got very little cooperation from the general public, from the merchants or from the government – and very little from politicians. Even today, the position is not such that we can say that the general population, the government or the politicians are fully aware of the importance of the development of secondary industries.’
– J. H. Hendrick Smit, Southern Rhodesian Minister of Finance and Commerce, Address to the Rhodesian Jubilee Industrial Exhibition of the Bulawayo Chamber of Industries, 3 September 1940.
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought mixed fortunes for Southern Rhodesia. Whereas the colony previously relied largely on imports for manufactured goods, it now turned to local products because of the interruptions in international trade caused by the war. Imports became increasingly unavailable, inducing scarcity and high demand. Shortages stimulated calls for local industry to fill the vacuum. Consequently, an import substitution industrialisation (ISI) drive temporarily developed. However, this impact of the Second World War was not unique to Southern Rhodesia. It was also felt in some other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The only exception to this was South Africa, which had a comparatively established secondary industry by the time the war broke out. Not all industrialisation was sparked off by the conditions of the war, however. For example, in British West Africa, Lord William M. Hailey had already recommended in 1938 that Britain allow her dependencies to develop local secondary industries. While these factors are acknowledged, the impact of the war stood out, as it accelerated industrial development.
At the same time, secondary industrial development in colonies such as Kenya and Southern Rhodesia was aided by the greater buying power of their White settler population. Southern Rhodesia had the crucial advantage of being a self-governing colony, a status that gave it some considerable control of the domestic economy. Southern Rhodesia under the Responsible Government was free to manipulate tariffs, something denied to every other colony. Shigeru Akita has observed a similar tendency in British India during the Great Depression, wherein a self-governing India took full advantage of her fiscal independence to promote her industries, which had the effect of elbowing out Britain’s efforts to dominate the Indian market.
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- Information
- Manufacturing in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1979Interest Group Politics, Protectionism and the State, pp. 45 - 78Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022