Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T01:37:44.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ENDOGENOUS PROCESSES OF COLONIAL SETTLEMENT. THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF EUROPEAN SETTLER FARMING IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Ewout Frankema ,
Erik Green  and
Ellen Hillbom
Ewout Frankema
Affiliation:
Wageningen University
Erik Green
Affiliation:
Lund University Stellenbosch University
Ellen Hillbom
Affiliation:
Lund University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper comments on studies that aim to quantify the long-term economic effects of historical European settlement across the globe. We argue for the need to properly conceptualise «colonial settlement» as an endogenous development process shaped by the interaction between prospective settlers and indigenous peoples. We conduct three comparative case studies in West, East and Southern Africa, showing that the «success» or «failure» of colonial settlement critically depended on colonial government policies arranging European farmer’s access to local land, but above all, local labour resources. These policies were shaped by the clashing interests of African farmers and European planters, in which colonial governments did not necessarily, and certainly not consistently, abide to settler demands, as is often assumed.

Resumen

Este trabajo hace un balance de los estudios que tienen por objeto cuantificar los efectos económicos a largo plazo de la colonización europea histórica en el mundo. Se defiende la necesidad de conceptualizar adecuadamente «asentamiento colonial» como un proceso de desarrollo endógeno determinado por la interacción entre los potenciales colonos y los pueblos indígenas. Se llevan a cabo tres estudios comparativos de caso en el oeste, el este y el sur de África, mostrando que el «éxito» o «fracaso» del asentamiento colonial dependía fundamentalmente de las políticas que el gobierno colonial organizase para el acceso del agricultor europeo a la tierra local, pero sobre todo, a los recursos de mano de obra local. Estas políticas se determinaron por los intereses en conflicto de los agricultores africanos y los granjeros europeos, y los gobiernos coloniales, en contra de lo que frecuentemente se supone, no acataron necesariamente (y desde luego no de manera consistente) las demandas de los colonos europeos.

Keywords

Sub-Saharan Africacolonial historysettler farmingcash-crop productionN01N17O10O13África subsaharianahistoria colonialagricultura de colonosproducción de cultivos comerciales
Type
Panorama
Information
Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , September 2016 , pp. 237 - 265
Check for updates
Copyright
© Instituto Figuerola, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

For their comments on previous drafts of this paper, the authors thank the participants of the session on Markets and Trade in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Africa at the Swedish Economic History Meeting 2013 at Lund University, of the seminar Colonial Legacies: Persistence and Long-Run Impact on Economic Growth at Fundación Ramón Areces-Instituto Figuerola de Ciencias Sociales in Madrid, and the session Settler Farming in East and Southern Africa of the African Economic History Workshop 2016 at Wageningen University, as well as colleagues at the Department of Economic History, Lund University and two anonymous reviewers. The authors are grateful for financial support of the Visiting Fellowship Program of the School of Economics and Management, Lund University. Ewout Frankema acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme for the project «Is Poverty Destiny? A New Empirical Foundation for Long-Term African Welfare Analysis» (ERC Grant Agreement no. 313114); and from the Dutch Science Foundation for the project «Is Poverty Destiny? Exploring Long Term Changes in African Living Standards in Global Perspective» (NWO VIDI Grant no. 016.124.307). Erik Green acknowledges financial support from the Swedish Research Council for the project «Development or exploitation: Mapping the development trajectories of large-scale farming in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe (Dnr: 2014-1509).

a

Department of Social Sciences, Rural and Environmental History Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6700 EW, Wageningen, The Netherlands. [email protected]

b

School of Economics and Management, Department of Economic History, Lund University, PO Box 7083, 220 07 Lund, Sweden. [email protected]; [email protected]

c

Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland, 7602, South Africa. [email protected]

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, D.; Johnson, S., and Robinson, J. A. (2001): «The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation». American Economic Review 91 (5), pp. 1369-1401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, D.; Johnson, S., and Robinson, J. A. (2002): «Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution». Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (4), pp. 1231-1294.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., and Robinson, J. A. (2010): «Why is Africa Poor?». Economic History of Developing Regions 25 (1), pp. 21-50.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., and Robinson, J. A. (2012): Why Nations Fail. The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishers.Google Scholar
Amin, S. (1972): «Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa. Origins and Contemporary Forms». Journal of Modern African Studies 10 (4), pp. 503-524.Google Scholar
Anderson, D. (1984): «Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography, and Drought: The Colonial State and Soil Conservation in East Africa During the 1930s». African Affairs 83 (332), pp. 321-343.Google Scholar
Anderson, D. (2000): «Master and Servant in Colonial Kenya». Journal of African History 41 (3), pp. 459-485.Google Scholar
Anderson, D., and Throup, D. (1985): «Africans and Agricultural Production in Colonial Kenya: The Myth of the War as the Watershed». The Journal of African History 26 (4), pp. 327-345.Google Scholar
Arrighi, G. (1966): «The Political Economy of Rhodesia». New Left Review 39, pp. 35-65.Google Scholar
Austin, G. (2005): Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana — From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807–1956 . Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press.Google Scholar
Austin, G. (2008): «The «Reversal of Fortune» Thesis and the Compression of History: Perspectives from African and Comparative Economic History». Journal of International Development 20, pp. 996-1027.Google Scholar
Austin, G. (2015): «The Economics of Colonialism in Africa», in M. Célestin, and L. Justin Yifu (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics: Context and Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 522-535.Google Scholar
Austin, G., and Sugihara, K. (eds) (2013): Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Banerjee, A. V., and Duflo, E. (2014): «Under the Thumb of History? Political Institutions and the Scope for Action». Annual Review of Economics 6 (1), pp. 951-971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, C., and Jayasurija, S. K. (1986): «Stages of Development in Smallholder Tree Crop Agriculture». Development and Change 17 (4), pp. 635-658.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. (2008): «Indigenous and Colonial Origins of Comparative Economic Development: The Case of Colonial India and Africa». Policy Research Working Papers, 4474. Washington DC: World Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolt, J., and Green, E. (2015): «Was the Wage Burden Too Heavy? — Settler Farming, Wages and the Profitability of Settler Agriculture in Colonial Malawi, C. 1900–1960». Journal of African History 56 (2), pp. 217-238.Google Scholar
Bowden, S.; Chiripanhura, B., and Mosley, P. (2008): «Measuring and Explaining Poverty in Six African Countries: A Long-Period Approach». Journal of International Development 20 (8), pp. 1049-1079.Google Scholar
Carney, J. A., and Rosomoff, R. N. (2011): In the Shadow of Slavery. Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chauveau, J. P., and Richard, J. (1977): «Une «Périphérie Recontrée»: À Propos D´un Système Local D’économie de Plantation en Côte d’Ivoire». Cahiers d’Études africaines 68 (17-4), pp. 485-523.Google Scholar
Chirwa, C. W. (1997) «The Garden of Eden: Sharecropping on the Shire Highlands Estates, 1920-1945», in Jeeves and Crusch (eds), White Farms, Black Labor – The State and Agrarian Change in Southern Africa, 1910-1950, Oxford: James Currey, 265-280.Google Scholar
Cooper, F. (2002): Africa Since 1940. The Past of the Present. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Curtis, K. R. (2003): «Smaller is Better: A Consensus of Peasants and Bureaucrats in Colonial Tanganyika», in W. G. Clarence-Smith, and S. Topik (eds), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America 1500–1989 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 312-334.Google Scholar
De Zwart, P. (2011): «South African Living Standards in Global Perspective, 1835–1910». Economic History of Developing Regions 26 (1), pp. 49-74.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. (1998): Guns, Germs and Steel. A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Easterly, W. (2006): The White Man’s Burden. Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Easterly, W., and Levine, R. (2012): «The European Origins of Economic Development». NBER Working Paper no. 18162. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Eckert, A. (2003): «Comparing Coffee Production in Cameroon and Tanganyika, C. 1900 to 1960s: Land, Labour and Politics», in W. G. Clarence-Smith, and S. Topik (eds), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America 1500-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 286-311.Google Scholar
Elliott, J. H. (2006): Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Eltis, D. (2000): The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, N. (2002): Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Firmin-Sellers, K. (2000): «Institutions, Context, and Outcomes: Explaining French and British Rule in West Africa». Comparative Politics 32 (3), pp. 253-272.Google Scholar
Fourie, J., and von Fintel, D. (2014): «Settler Skills and Colonial Development: The Huguenot Wine-Makers in Eighteenth-Century Dutch South Africa». Economic History Review 67 (4), pp. 932-963.Google Scholar
Frankema, E. (2011): «Colonial Taxation and Government Spending in British Africa, 1880–1940: Maximizing Revenue or Minimizing Effort?». Explorations in Economic History 48 (1), pp. 136-149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankema, E. (2012): «The Origins of Formal Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Was British Rule More Benign?». European Review of Economic History 16 (4), pp. 335-355.Google Scholar
Frankema, E. (2015): «Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History — A Review Essay». Economic History of Developing Regions 30 (1), pp. 44-67.Google Scholar
Frankema, E., and van Waijenburg, M. (2012): «Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880–1965». Journal of Economic History 72 (4), pp. 895-926.Google Scholar
Gallego, F. A., and Woodberry, R. (2010): «Christian Missionaries and Education in Former African Colonies: How Competition Mattered». Journal of African Economies 19 (3), pp. 294-329.Google Scholar
Gardner, L.A. (2012): Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, E. (2007): «Modern Agricultural History in Malawi: Perspectives on Policy Choices». African Studies Review 50 (3), pp. 143-167.Google Scholar
Green, E. (2013): «Land Concentration, Institutional Control and African Agency — Growth and Stagnation of European Tobacco Farming in Shire Highlands, c 1900–1940», in E. Hillbom, and P. Svensson (eds), Agricultural Transformations and Global History. London: Routledge, pp. 229-262.Google Scholar
Green, E. (2015): «The Development of Agrarian Capitalism and Settler Farming in Southern Rhodesia Revisited: Estimating the Role of Tenant Labour». Paper presented at the World Economic History Congress, Kyoto (August 3-7).Google Scholar
Haviland, W. E. (1953): «The Rise of the African Tobacco Industry in Nyasaland and its Production Problems». The South African Journal of Economics 22 (2), pp. 141-152.Google Scholar
Haviland, W. E. (1954): «The Use and Efficiency of African Labour in Tobacco Farming in Southern Rhodesia». The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 20 (1), pp. 100-106.Google Scholar
Hecht, R. M. (1984): «The Transformation of Lineage Production in Southern Ivory Coast, 1920–1980». Ethnology 2 (4), pp. 261-277.Google Scholar
Hecht, R. M. (1985): «Immigration, Land Transfer and Tenure Changes in Divo, Ivory Coast, 1940–1980». Africa 55 (3), pp. 319-336.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A. G. (2009): «The New Economic History of Africa». Journal of African History 50 (2), pp. 155-177.Google Scholar
Hyde, D. (2009): «Paying for the Emergency by Displacing the Settlers: Global Coffee and Rural Reconstruction in Late Colonial Kenya». Journal of Global History 4 (1), pp. 81-103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iliffe, J. (1979): A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kirk-Greene, A. H. M. (1980): «The Thin White Line: The Size of the British Colonial Service in Africa». African Affairs 79 (314), pp. 25-44.Google Scholar
Klein, H. S. (2010): The Atlantic Slave Trade, new edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Law, R. (2013): «There’s Nothing Grows in the West Indies But Will Grow Here»: Dutch and English Projects of Plantation Agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1650s-1780s», in R. Law; S. Schwarz, and S. Strickrodt (eds), Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 116-137.Google Scholar
Leonard, E., and Oswald, M. (1995): «Cocoa Smallholders Facing a Double Structural Adjustment in Côte D’Ivoire: Responses to a Predicted Crisis», in F. Ruf, and P. S. Siswoputranto (eds), Cocoa Cycles — The Economics of Cocoa Supply. Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing Ltd, pp. 125-177.Google Scholar
Maddison, A. (2010): «Historical Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2008 AD». Available at http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/ Google Scholar
Makana, N. E. (2009): «Metropolitan Concern, Colonial State Policy and the Embargo on Cultivation of Coffee by Africans in Colonial Kenya: The Example of Bugoma District, 1930–1960». History in Africa 38, pp. 315-329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, B. R. (2007): International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia & Oceania, 1750–2005, 5th edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Mkandawire, T. (2010): «On Tax Efforts and Colonial Heritage in Africa». Journal of Development Studies 46 (10), pp. 1647-1669.Google Scholar
Moradi, A. (2008): «Confronting Colonial Legacies: Lessons from Human Development in Ghana and Kenya, 1880-2000». Journal of International Development 20, pp. 1107-1120.Google Scholar
Mosley, P. (1983): The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1963. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Niemeijer, D. (1996): «The Dynamics of African Agricultural History: Is It Time for a New Development Paradigm?». Development and Change 27 (1), pp. 87-110.Google Scholar
Nugent, P. (2012): Africa Since Independence, 2nd edn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Nunn, N. (2010): «Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa». American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 100, pp. 147-152.Google Scholar
Orr, A. (2000): «‘Green Gold’? Burley Tobacco, Smallholder Agriculture, and Poverty Alleviation in Malawi». World Development 28 (2), pp. 347-363.Google Scholar
Palmer, R. (1985): «White Farmers in Malawi: Before and After the Depression». African Affairs 83, pp. 211-245.Google Scholar
Phimister, I. (1988): An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890–1948: Capital, Accumulation and Class Struggle. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Punt, E. (1979): «The Development of African Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia with Particular Reference to the Interwar Years». Department of History, University of Natal, Unpublished Master’s Thesis.Google Scholar
Putterman, L., and Weil, D. N. (2010): «Post-1500 Population Flows and the Long Run Determinants of Economic Growth and Inequality». Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (4), pp. 1627-1682.Google Scholar
Rodney, W. (1972): How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.Google Scholar
Rostow, W. W. (1960): The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rubert, S. C. (1998): A Most Promising Weed — A History of Tobacco Farming and Labor in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1945. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Schutz, B. M. (1973): «European Population Patterns, Cultural Persistence and Political Change in Rhodesia». Canadian Journal of African Studies 7 (1), pp. 3-25.Google Scholar
Seibert, G. (2013): «São Tomé and Príncipe: The First Plantation Economy in the Tropics», in R. Law; S. Schwarz, and S. Strickrodt (eds), Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 54-78.Google Scholar
Spear, T. (1997): Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land and Agricultural Development in Arusha and Meru. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Storm, S. (2013): «Why the West Grew Rich and the Rest Did Not, or How the Present Shapes Our Views of the Past». Development and Change 44 (5), pp. 1181-1206.Google Scholar
Tosh, J. (1980): «The Cash-Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Reappraisal». African Affairs 79 (314), pp. 79-94.Google Scholar
Woodberry, R. (2012): «The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy». American Political Science Review 106 (2), pp. 244-274.Google Scholar
Woods, D. (2003): «The Tragedy of the Cocoa Pod: Rent-Seeking, Land and Ethnic Conflict in Ivory Coast». The Journal of Modern African Studies 41 (4), pp. 641-655.Google Scholar
Woods, D. (2004): «Predatory Elites, Rents and Cocoa: A Comparative Analysis of Ghana and Ivory Coast». Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 42 (2), pp. 224-241.Google Scholar
Young, C. (1994): The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar