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Economics and Ethnicity: The Italian Community in Malawi*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

John McCracken
John McCracken
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Extract

This article focuses on the Italian community in Malawi, one of the smallest immigrant minority groups in Central Africa, but by no means the least important. Using the records of the Custodian of Enemy Property housed in the National Archives of Malawi, it suggests that, in the light of the Italian experience, there is need to modify the conventional view of the white farming sector as being uniformly inefficient and incapable of survival other than through the active support of the colonial state. At a time between the wars when capitalist farming as a whole was in deep depression, Ignaco Conforzi succeeded for reasons largely unconnected with the intervention of the state, in creating a highly profitable, diversified agricultural empire which survived the Second World War virtually intact. Through his influence, an Italian community was created, linked to Conforzi by a variety of economic and family ties and drawn largely from the same small area of central Italy from which he himself had come. Like members of other ethnic groups, these immigrants were constantly balancing their multiple identities – as whites, as farmers or mechanics, as Italians or as natives of a particular district in Italy. Between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s external and internal forces combined to transform them into a classic minority, ‘singled out…for differential and unequal treatment’ but from the late 1940s onwards those who were regarded by the colonial authorities as conforming to European standards were reabsorbed within the wider settler community. Overall, however, they tended to be more skilled and, crucially, less heavily reliant on the state than were British settlers and it is these factors that explain their relative success.

Type
White Settlers
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , July 1991 , pp. 313 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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12 Palmer, ‘White farmers’, 221–2.

13 Ibid., 221–8; Annual report of the Nyasaland Agricultural Department for 1935. See also McCracken, John, ‘Planters, peasants and the colonial state: the impact of the Native Tobacco Board in the Central Province of Malawi’, J. Southern Afr. Studies, IX (1983), 173–4.Google Scholar

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16 G. Conforzi to the author, Thyolo, 27 June 1986. The title ‘Dr’ by which Conforzi was almost universally known was itself the subject of controversy. British residents at times questioned its use, noting that Conforzi possessed neither a medical degree nor a university doctorate, but this was of no consequence to Italians for whom the title was at once a recognition of Conforzl's diploma in agriculture and of the respect in which he was held within the community.

17 Statement of purchases of tobacco by the Imperial Tobacco Company, 1920, MNA S1/835/21. The extent of Sabbatinl's land holdings are described in Hubert Young (Governor) to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 14 March 1934, MNA NC 1/15/17.

18 A. H. Sabbatini to Chief Secretary, 19 May 1919, MNA S1/1158/19; Sabbatini to Chief Secretary, 24 June 1925, MNA S1/119/25.

19 There is a drawing of this house and additional information on Sabbatini, some of it inaccurate, in Roy, D. Brian, The Malawi Collection (Blantyre, 1984).Google Scholar

20 Sabbatini to Chief Secretary, 16 Dec. 1931; minute by J. C. A[braham], 16 Dec. 1931, MNA S1/1192/31.

21 Sabbatini to Chief Secretary, 8 Oct. 1932; Dec. 1935; Director of Agriculture, minute, 19 Sept. 1935, MNA S1/1192/31; Secretariat minute, 21 April 1939, MNA S1/1158/19.

22 Conforzi to author, 27 June 1986.

23 Simpson to Colonial Office, Zomba, 11 July 1906, PRO CO 525/13.

24 Ibid, and Rangeley, W. H. J., ‘A brief history of the tobacco industry in Nyasaland’, Part I, Nyasaland Journal, X (1957), 73.Google Scholar

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26 Report of Commission into the Tobacco Industry, 1939, MNA COM 7 4/2/1.

27 Confidential submission by the Commission into the Tobacco Industry to the Governor, Sir Donald Mackenzie-Kennedy, 19 July J939, Ibid.

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30 I. Conforzi to Chairman, Tobacco Industry Commission, 3 Jan. 1939, MNA COM 7 1/1/1. See also Rangeley, , ‘Brief history of the tobacco industry’, Part II, Nyasaland Journal, X (1957), 33Google Scholar, and McCracken, ‘Native Tobacco Board’, 172–6. Conforzl's assessment of his own role in stimulating the development of the tobacco industry was typically abrasive: ‘I cannot help saying that my appearance in the Northern province marked the decisive beginning of the industry and natives began to realise only then that there was a price to be obtained for their efforts’.

31 Minutes of meetings of the Native Tobacco Board, 12 July and 9 Oct. 1928, MNA A2/61/1.

32 Rangeley, ‘Brief history of the tobacco industry’, Part II, 33; Memo by A. J. Hornby, Acting Director of Agriculture, 7 July 1937, MNA S1/437/34.

33 Westrop, Arthur. Green Gold (Bulawayoc. 1964), 57Google Scholar; Palmer, ‘Nyasaland tea industry’, 238.

34 Palmer, , ‘Nyasaland tea industry’, 221–31.Google Scholar

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36 D. L. Blunt, Director of Agriculture, to S. S. Murray, 6 March 1939, MNA COM- 7 1/1/1.

37 Note on Tenant Grown Tobacco in the Central Province, 1944, MNA L3/48/9. For further information on the structure of estate agriculture on the Lilongwe plain see McCracken, John, ‘Sharecropping in Malawi: the visiting tenant system in the Central Province, c. 1920–1968’, in Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, Malawi: An Alternative Pattern of Development (Edinburgh, 1985).Google Scholar

38 J. C. Abraham to Dr I. Conforzi, 13 Feb. 1932, MNA S1/1309/30.

39 See file on ‘Italian nationals resident in Nyasaland’, Sept. 1940 MNA 1 A/604.

40 Dr I. Conforzi to Custodian of Enemy Property, 5 Aug. 1940; to Chief Secretary, 3 Sept. 1940, MNA CEP 2/8/1; Note in Political Intelligence Bulletin, No. 4 of 1943, MNA 1A/632.

41 M. de Vito to A. de Vito, Mapanga Camp, 28 May 1943, Ibid.

42 ‘Italian nationals resident in Nyasaland’, Sept. 1940, MNA 1 A/604. Unless otherwise stated, information on the Italian detainees is drawn from this source and from G. Conforzi to the author, 27 June 1986.

43 Report of the Directors of I. Conforzi (T. & T.) Ltd for the year ending 31 Dec. 1940, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

44 For a perceptive account of the development of patron-client relationships within the Indian community see Dotson and Dotson, The Indian Minority of Zambia, Rhodesia and Malawi, 66–8.

45 Conforzi to author, 27 June 1989.

46 Chief Secretary to the Custodian of Enemy Property, 4 Sept. 1940, MNA CEP 1/2/1.

47 Statement by W. J. Roper, Custodian of Enemy Property in High Court of Nyasaland re Ignaco Conforzi, Giuseppe Conforzi and Mary Conforzi, 1 April 1944, MNA CEPP 2/8/1; Custodian of Enemy Property to Manager, Standard Bank, Blantyre, 14 June 1940, MNA CEP 2/9/1.

48 I. Conforzi (T. & T.) Co Ltd, General Profit and Loss Account at 31 December 1940, MNA CEP 2/9/1.

49 Ibid; Report of the Directors of I. Conforzi (T. & T.) Co Ltd for the year ending 31 December 1940, CEP 2/9/2; L. S. Norman to Custodian of Enemy Property, 17 Sept. 1941. According to John Stevenson, it was only ‘the very wealthy’ who commanded personal incomes in excess of £20,000 in Britain in the late 1930s: Stevenson, , British Society 1914–45 (London, 1984), 122.Google Scholar For a further comparison: the Chief Secretary and Chief Justice in Nyasaland, the two best-paid officials after the Governor, were each on a salary of £1,450 in 1939.

50 Hodder-Williams, , ‘Afrikaners in Rhodesia’, 637–8.Google Scholar Conforzl's wife, Anne de Vito Conforzi, died at the age of 39 in Rome in 1946.

51 Sabbatinl's daughters were educated at Bromley High School and his son, Mario, at the Technical College, Belfast. For an example of one Italian's extremely rudimentary English see G. Mariani to District Commissioner, Lilongwe, 1 April 1936, MNA NCL 2/2/1.

52 For official attitudes towards members of different Christian denominations, see Linden, Ian, Catholics, Peasants and Chewa Resistance in Nyasaland (London, 1974), 87–102.Google Scholar

53 Conforzi was a member of the Native Tobacco Board between 1937 and 1940. Hardly had he been appointed than the Native Tobacco Exporters Association passed a motion proposing ‘That no buyer or any person commercially interested in tobacco should be a member’. Minutes of the Native Tobacco Board, 5 Oct. 1937 and 28 Aug. 1938, MNA S1 /720/26. Later the Director of Agriculture wrote that‘The advice of those in the trade, valuable though it may be, must be biassed. Dr. Conforzi is the second largest buyer of tobacco yet he has considerable influence with the Board in fixing the price at which the Board buys’. D. K. Blunt, memorandum on the future reorganization of the Native Tobacco Board. 12 Oct. 1939, MNA S1/943B/26. See also Conforzi to Chairman, Tobacco Industry Commission, 3 Jan. 1939, MNA COM 7 1/1/1.

54 Note by Governor, 7 April 1946, MNA 1A/594. The Sabbatini family were particularly respected. A colonial official noted of them in September 1940: ‘They are cultured people of good origin. Deeply religious’. Notes on ‘Italian nationals resident in Nyasaland’, 6 Sept. 1940, MNA 1 A/604.

55 Palmer, , ‘Nyasaland tea industry’, 230Google Scholar, footnote 87, quotes a letter written in 1936 ‘to the manager of one of the larger concerns from his home office in which it is said that “Conforzi must be stopped ”’. For relations between Conforzi and the Imperial Tobacco Company see Director of Agriculture to Chief Secretary, 11 June 1936, MNA A6/1/37.

56 Supervisor's reports for Lilongwe District, 22 Oct., 25 Nov. 1926, 7 Jan. 1927, MNA A6/1/44; minutes of Native Tobacco Board 14 Jan. 1927, MNA A2/61/1.

57 District Commissioner, Lilongwe District, to I. Conforzi, 7 July 1937; to Manager Conforzl's Lilongwe Factory, 16 Aug. 1937; to G. Lossaco, 24 Aug. 1937, MNA NCL 2/2/1.

58 Blantyre Police Monthly Report, Aug. 1931, Aug. 1936, MNA POL 5/2/1; Director of Agriculture to Chief Secretary, 11 June 1936; Provincial Commissioner, Northern Province to Hornby, 2 June 1937, MNA A6/1/37.

59 R. M. Mortimer to Director of Agriculture, 11 April 1937; to Chairman, Native Tobacco Board, 6 Aug. 1937, MNA A6/1/37.

60 Palmer, , ‘Nyasaland tea industry’, 230Google Scholar, footnote 82; file entitled ‘Transport of Tobacco Mr. I. C. Conforzi 1935–1949’, uncatalogued, M[alawi] R[aihvay] A[rchives], Limbe. All subsequent references from the Railway Archives are drawn from this file.

61 Minutes of the Motor Licensing Board, Blantyre, 7 Jan. 1935, MRA.

62 W. M. Codrington to H. G. Duncan, 4 Nov. 1936; Duncan to Codrington, 17 Nov. 1936, MRA.

63 Ibid.

64 Storar to Acting General Manager, Limbe, 8 May 1939, MRA.

65 For a comparative example see Perin, Roberto, ‘Making good Fascists and good Canadians: consular propaganda and the Italian community in Montreal in the 1930s’, in Gold, Gerald L. (ed.), Minorities and Mother Country Imagery (St John's, Newfoundland, 1984), 136–58.Google Scholar

66 For the domestic Italian background see Seton-Watson, Christopher, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism 1870–1925 (London, 1967), 505–629.Google Scholar

67 Record of interviews with Italian Nationals, 5 Sept. 1940, MNA 1A/604; Note by Governor (E. C. Richards), 7 April 1947, MNA 1A/594.

68 Smith, Dennis Mack, Italy: a Modern History (Ann Arbor, 1969), 399.Google Scholar For a more extended discussion of British attitudes to Mussolini see Orwell, George, ‘Who are the war criminals?’ in Orwell, Sonia and Argus, Ian (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ii (Harmondsworth, 1968), 363–9.Google Scholar

69 Statement for Motor Traffic Licensing Board by Dr I. Conforzi, 5 April 1939, MRA.

70 For an extended version of Wirth's definition see Hepburn, A. C., Minorities in History (London, 1978), 1Google Scholar, and Davis, F.James, Minority-Dominant Relations: A Sociological Analysis (Illinois, 1978), 4.Google Scholar

71 Chief Secretary to Custodian of Enemy Property, 4 Sept. 1940, MNA CEP 1/2/1.

72 Note by G.S., 13 April 1941 and more generally file on Italian Nationals Resident in Nyasaland, MNA 1A/604.

73 Lands Officer to Custodian of Enemy Property, 9 Oct. 1943; Chief Secretary to Secretary, Convention of Associations, 3 Feb. 1944; Custodian of Enemy Property to Chief Secretary, 10 March 1944, MNA CEP 1/2/1.

74 Custodian of Enemy Property to Financial Secretary, 27 Sept. 1943, MNA CEP 1/2/1.

76 Custodian of Enemy Property to Chief Secretary, 17 Sept., 24 Nov. 1941; A.F. Barron to Custodian of Enemy Property, 26 Nov. 1942; H.J. Webb to Land Officer, Blantyre, 21 July 1943, MNA CEP 1/2/1.

77 Custodian of Enemy Property to Manager, Standard Bank Blantyre, 14 June 1940, MNA CEP 2/9/1. 77 Address by L. S. Norman, no date [1941], MNA CEP 2/9/1.

78 Report of the Directors of I. Conforzi (T. & T.) Ltd for year ending 31 Dec. 1941, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

79 I. Conforzi (T. & T) Ltd General Profit and Loss Account for year ending 31 Dec. 1941, MNA CEP 2/9/1.

80 For a more pessimistic assessment see Palmer, ‘White farmers’, 244–5.

81 L. S. Norman to A. V. Maunder, 24 Dec. 1940, MNA CEP 2/9/1.

82 Report of Annual General meeting of I. Conforzi (T. & T.) Ltd, 3 Oct. 1945, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

83 A. V. Maunder to Management Committee, I. Conforzi (T. & T.) Ltd, 25 Nov. 1946, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

84 W. E. Maunder to H. Claxton, Custodian of Enemy Property, 27 Feb. 1946; Custodian of Enemy Property to Chief Secretary, 1 March 1946, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

85 Ibid; Chief Secretary to Custodian of Enemy Property, 12 March 1946, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

86 See Register notes on Dr Conforzi, PRO CO 703/24.

87 G. Conforzi to author, 27 June 1986.

88 Register notes on Conforzi, PRO CO 703/24.

89 For details see MNA CEP 2/8/1.

90 A. V. Maunder to Custodian of Enemy Property, 26 Nov. 1946, MNA CEP 2/9/2.

91 Commissioner of Police, Zomba, to Chief Secretary, 1 June 1946, MNA 1 A/609 Secret.

92 For the creation of such barriers elsewhere in Africa see Kennedy, , Islands of White, 109–92.Google Scholar

93 Major Roper, O/C Internment Camp; Assistant Inspector of Police, Mlanje, both quoted in Commissioner of Police, Zomba, to Chief Secretary, 1 June 1946, MNA 1 A/609 Secret.

94 Statement by G. F. Thompson, Secretary, Motor Traffic Control Board, 6 April 1949, MRA. The change in policy can be explained partly by the inability of Nyasaland Railways to carry the increased weight of traffic circulating by 1949 and partly by the readiness of the new governor, Colby, to support road traffic at the expense of the railways if necessary.

95 The largest post-war strike in Nyasaland involving more than 5,000 workers took place on Conforzl's tea estates in 1960. See Annual Report of the Nyasaland Labour Department for 1960.

96 It is notable that of the 545,857 acres of European-owned land recommended for purchase by the Government in 1948 none was owned by Conforzi (Report of the Planning Committee on the Land Commission of 1946, 1948, MNA LS/GEN/2). Devastating critiques of the performance of the major companies are provided in histories of the Blantyre and East Africa Company and of the British Central Africa Company compiled in the Secretariat in 1949, PRO CO 525/208. See also Pachai, Bridglal, Land and Politics in Malawi, 1875–1975 (Kingston, Ontario, 1978), 128–38.Google Scholar

97 White, , Magomero, 209, 222.Google Scholar

98 Note of a discussion held in Zomba between G. Conforzi, the Secretary for Natural Resources and the Secretary for Lands and Mines, 11 Jan. 1960, MNA 1.9/3/5.

99 Westrop, , Green Gold, 352Google Scholar; Note on European-owned estates in the Lilongwe district, 1947, MNA NCL 2/7/1.

100 Westrop, , Green Gold, 301, 344.Google Scholar The rehabilitation of the Italians in the settler community can be dated from 23 Nov. 1948, the day on which Losacco and Conforzl's son, Giuseppe, were readmitted as members of the Northern Provinces [later Central Province] Association, a body which had actively campaigned against their return in 1944. Minutes of meetings of the Central Province Association, 17 March 1944; 23 Nov. 1948.

101 I. Conforzi to B. Barron, 20 Dec. 1963, Central Province Association Papers. Banda alleged that ‘Conforzi… is the jury and judge of what is fair practice. He employs the graders, the classifiers and these classifiers and graders put prices, put value on the tobacco that is being grown, and protect these prices. Well I mean to put an end to this. I mean to put an end to this by making it quite difficult for him to get away with £5,000 a year’. Proceedings of the Nyasaland Legislative Council, 31 May 1962, 297.

102 G. Conforzi to Chairman, Central Region Association, 10 Sept. 1970, MNA Central Province Association Papers; to author 27 June 1986. Further information on the transformation of the Central Province tobacco industry can be found in the file ‘General Correspondence, 1965–73’, Central Province Association Papers and in McCracken, , ‘Share-cropping in Malawi’, 51–9.Google Scholar

103 Kennedy, , Islands of White, 100–5 and 187–92.Google Scholar

104 Palmer, , ‘White farmers’, 222–3.Google Scholar