Abstract
The imperial conquest of Africa was undertaken to tap African resources in order to help resolve the economic problems of Europe. Yet the circumstances of the conquest brought the colonial rulers to grips with a basic contradiction: only a long, intensive process could create conditions within Africa that could bring about substantial opportunities for investment, sales and profits. Beneath the surface of colonial political and administrative policy lay the unfolding process of capital penetration, a process that was far from reaching full fruition in the colonial era.
It is given to few men to think clearly on the Africa question. One of these few men is Sir George Goldie. He has said Africa should be divided up into that region which white men can colonize in the true sense of the word — a region so admirably represented by South Africa; then a region which white men can colonize to much the same extent as they can in India — the highlands of British Central Africa; and then that region which white men cannot colonize at all in the true sense of the word — West Africa. This is politically the Africa we must keep in our mind, remembering England wants markets as well as colonies; and so West Africa, the richest raw-material market in the world, is as much use to her as a colony and she can hold it easily by a garrison of Englishmen as a feeding ground for her manufacturing classes here at home.
Mary Kingsley in the Liberia Bulletin, no. 14, 1899, p. 48.
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A compendium of essays on colonial Africa in four volumes, most of which reflect the apologist viewpoint of the editors is Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan, eds., Colonialism in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1968–1975). The fifth volume contains an important bibliography. Among regional and national studies some of the best come from the French tradition.
Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Africa, 1900–1945 (C. Hurst, 1971), is stronger on economic than social history. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies concessionaires, 1898–1930 (Mouton, 1972) is on French Equatorial Africa. An outstanding synthesis was achieved by
Michel Merlier, Le Congo de la colonisation belge à l’indépendance (Maspéro, 1962). A number of authors have expanded on Merlier’s vision in general articles, notably Jean-Philippe Peemans, ‘Capital Accumulation in the Congo under Colonialism: The Role of the State’ in the Gann and Duignan collection. By contrast the best single national history in English is strongest on social and cultural developments:
John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge University Press, 1979).
There is a solid historical literature in German, particularly on economic factors, dealing with the old German colonies. Of particular significance are: Helmuth Stoecker (ed.), Kamerun unter Deutscher Herrschaft (Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften VEB, 1960–8);
Rainer Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung (Duncker und Humboldt, 1970);
Karin Hausen, Deutsche Kolonialherrschaft in Afrika; Wirtschaftsinteressen und Kolonialverwaltung in Kamerun vor 1914 (Atlantis Verlag, 1970);
Albert Wirz, Von Sklavenhandel zum Kolonialhandel (Atlantis Verlag, 1972) and
Helmut Bley, South West Africa under German Rule, 1894 – 1914 (Northwestern University Press, 1971). Bley is a liberal who views imperialism as a préfiguration of fascism; Stoecker and Tetzlaff are Marxist analyses from the German Democratic Republic.
For an overview of British East Africa the best compendium remains Vincent Harlow and Elizabeth Chilver, History of East Africa, II (Clarendon Press, 1965). For Kenya, there is a serviceable descriptive introduction in
Carl Rosberg and John Nottingham, The Myth of ‘Mau Mau’: Nationalism in Kenya (Stanford University Press, 1966). Studies of the political economy are
Richard Wolff, The Economics of Colonialism (Yale University Press, 1974) and, on the whole region,
Edward Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa; the Politics of Economic Change, 1919–1939 (Heinemann, 1973). Two major articles by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale further this analysis: ‘Coping with the Contradictions: the Development of the Colonial State in Kenya’, J AH, XX (1979) and ‘Crises of Accumulation, Coercion and the Colonial State’, CJAS, XIV (1980).
J. Forbes Munro, Colonial Rule and the Kamba (Clarendon Press, 1975) is an important local study. On Uganda
see Mahmood Mamdani, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda (Heinemann, 1976);
Dan Wadada Nabudere, Imperialism and Revolution in Uganda (Onyx Press, 1980) and
Jan Jelmert Jergensen, Uganda, A Modern History (St Martin’s Press, 1981).
On British Central Africa two liberal standards are Philip Mason, The Birth of a Dilemma, already cited and Richard Gray, The Two Nations (Oxford University Press, 1960).
DJ. Murray, The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia (Clarendon Press, 1980) is a solid Weberian study of interest groups and the state. Of pioneering importance is
Giovanni Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (Mouton, 1967). Ian Phimister is preparing a major general study. The relevant pages in
Andrew Roberts, A History of Zambia (Africana, 1976) make an introduction to colonial Northern Rhodesia. For Malawi see B.S. Krishnamurthy, ‘Economic Policy, Land and Labour in Nyasaland, 1890–1914’ in Pachai’s already cited The Early History of Malawi and the Roderick Macdonald collection, From Nyasaland to Malawi.
Reference has been made already to the Belgian Congo. However, a number of works on the period of the Congo Free State should be noted: Neal Ascherson’s biography, The King Incorporated (George Allen & Unwin, 1963);
W.R. Louis and Jean Stengers, eds, E.D. Morel’s History of the Congo Reform Movement (Clarendon Press, 1968); Robert Harms, The End of Red Rubber: A Reassessment’, J AH, XVI (1975); Roger Anstey, ‘The Congo Rubber Atrocities’, AHS, IV (1971); Mutwale-Muyimbwe, ‘Les sources publiques de financement de l’Etat Indépendant du Congo, 1885–1907’, Cahiers du CEDAF, V (1973). On the contemporary slave trade scandal in Angola see
James Duffy, A Question of Slavery (Harvard University Press, 1967).
Several important articles have begun the examination of the political economy of Portuguese Africa: Gervase Clarence-Smith, ‘The Myth of Uneconomic Imperialism: the Portuguese in Angola’, cited for the last chapter; Leroy Vail, The Struggle for Mozambique: Capitalist Rivalries, 1900–1940’, Review, III (1979); Alan K. Smith, ‘Salazar and Portuguese Colonial Policy’, JAH, XV (1974). A number of surveys exist as well: James Duffy, Portuguese Africa (Harvard University Press, 1958);
Ronald Chilcote, Protest and Resistance in Angola and Mozambique (University of California Press, 1972);
Thomas Henriksen, Mozambique, a History (Rex Collings, 1978) and, best of all,
Malyn Newitt, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (C. Hurst, 1981), with a good bibliography. In Portuguese there is
Armando Castro, O Sistema Colonial Português em Africa (ed. Caminho, 1978).
Overviews of the French mainland colonies have already been noted. See also Sheldon Gellar, Structural Changes and Political Dependency: Senegal 1885–1945 (Sage, 1976) and on a special topic,
Abdoulaye Ly, Les mercenaires noires (Présence Africaine, 1957) and Myron Echenberg, ‘Les migrations militaires en Afrique Occidentale Française 1900–40’, CJAS, XIV (1980). Two extraordinary colonial travel volumes are
Geoffrey Gorer, Africa Dances, (Faber & Faber, 1935)
and André Gide, Voyage au Congo, (Gallimard, 1927).
There is a useful general history of West Africa in Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule (Hutchinson, 1968). An overview on Nigeria by Gavin Williams in his edited book, Nigeria: Economy and Society (Rex Collings, 1976) may be supplemented by Bill Freund and Bob Shenton, ‘The Incorporation of Northern Nigeria in the World Capitalist Economy’, Review of African Political Economy, 13 (1979). On Ghana, Rhoda Howard has attempted an underdevelop-mentalist overview, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Ghana (Croom Helm, 1978). See also
Geoffrey Kay’s book of readings, The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana (Cambridge University Press, 1972).
North-eastern Africa is very poorly served for the colonial period. Among works to consult are: R.L. Hess, Italian Colonialism in Somaliland (University of Chicago Press, 1966);
I.M. Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965);
Mohammed Omar Beshir, Revolution and Nationalism in the Sudan (Rex Collings, 2nd edn., 1977).
The economic and social themes at the core of this chapter were advanced enormously by a seminal collection that bears on all aspects of agriculture, Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons, eds, The Roots of Rural Poverty in Southern and Central Africa (Heinemann, 1977). There is a recent Russian synthesis of high merit,
V.M. Ivanov, Agrarian Reforms and Hired Labour in Africa (Progress Publishers, 1979).
Judith Heyer et al., Rural Development in Africa (St Martin’s Press, 1981) considers colonial economic history extensively. A major study of the impact of the decline and abolition of slavery is
Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters (Yale University Press, 1980), which deeds with Zanzibar and the Kenya coast. Also on this theme are
Denise Bouche, Les villages de liberté en Afrique Occidentale Française, 1887–1910 (Mouton, 1968);
Tim Weiskel, ‘Labour in the Emergent Periphery: From Slavery to Migrant Labour among the Baule Peoples 1880–1925’ in Wl. Goldfrank, ed., The World System of Capitalism; Past and Present (Sage, 1979) and Philip Igbafe, ‘Slavery and Emancipation in Benin 1897–1945’, JAH, XVI (1975).
A pioneering study of colonial labour in Africa by a South African Communist in Moscow has recently been reissued: Albert Nzula, Forced Labour in Africa (Zed Press, 1979). Aspects of labour history are taken up for Kenya in
Anthony Clayton and Donald Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (Frank Cass, 1974);
Sharon Stichter, Migrant Labour in Kenya (Longman, 1982)
K.K., Janmohamed, ‘African Labourers in Mombasa 1895–1940’, in Bethwell Ogot, ed., Hadith (2), 1972,
and Roger van Zwanenberg, Colonial Capital and Labour in Kenya 1919–1939 (East African Literature Bureau, 1975),
The scattered history of labour in West Africa would include, in a developing literature, A.G. Hopkins, The Lagos Strike of 1897: an Exploration in Nigerian Labour History’, Past and Present, XXXV (1968); Roger Thomas, ‘Forced Labour in West Africa; the Case of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast 1906–27’, JAH, XIV (1973); Michael Mason, ‘Working on the Railway: Forced Labour in Northern Nigeria, 1907–12’ and Arnold Hughes and Robin Cohen, ‘An Emerging Nigerian Working Class: The Lagos Experience 1897–1939’, both in Robin Cohen, Jean Copans and Peter Gutkind, eds, African Labor History (Sage, 1978) and Gilles Sautter, ‘Le chemin de fer Congo-Océan’, CEA, VII (1967).
On labour migration, see Samir Amin, ed., Modem Migrations in West Africa (Oxford University Press, 1974), W.M. Freund, ‘Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines 1903–45’, JAH, XXII (1981); Marvin Harris, ‘Labour Migration among the Mozambique Thonga’, Africa, XXIX (1959);J.P. Chrétien,’Des sédentaires devenus migrants: motifs des départs des burundais et des rwandais vers l’Uganda’, Cultures et développement, X (1978); F.E. Sanderson, ‘Development of Labour Migration from Nyasaland 1891–1914’, JAH, II (1961) and Segun Osoba, ‘The Phenomenon of Labour Migration in the Era of British Colonial Rule’, JHSN, IV (1969).
Apart from Palmer and Parsons, another important collection relevant to agriculture in the colonial period is Martin Klein, ed., Peasants in Africa (Sage, 1980). For Zambia, Robin Palmer’s edited Zambián Land and Labour Studies (Zambia National Archives, Occasional Papers, 4 vols) are useful. Quite unlike anything else are the finely observed and fiercely empiricist books of
Polly Hill: Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana (1962); Studies in the Rural Capitalism of West Africa (1970); Rural Hausa; a Village and a Setting (1972) and Population, Prosperity and Poverty in Kano 1900 and 1970 (1977), all published by Cambridge University Press.
In the scholarship produced during the late colonial period, the Makerere school of writers on Ugandan agriculture had a special importance and remains valuable despite the now transparently heavy celebration of the cash crop. A classic is C.C. Wrigley, Crops and Wealth in Uganda (Kampala, 1959). Two late works deriving from this school are
H.W. West, ed., The Transformation of Land Tenure in Buganda since 1896 (Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden & Cambridge University Press, 1971)
and Audrey Richards et al., Subsistence to Commercial Farming in Present-Day Buganda (Cambridge University Press, 1973).
Among a list of works of analytic merit on cash cropping in various parts of tropical Africa, the best should include: Sara Berry, Custom, Cocoa and Socioeconomic Change (Clarendon Press, 1975); Yves Mersadier, ‘La crise de l’arachide sénégalaise au début des années trente’, BIFAN, série B (28), 1966; Jean-Yves Marchai, ‘L’office du Niger: îlot de prospérité paysanne ou pôle de production agricole?’, CJAS, VIII (1974);
Herman Pössinger, ‘Interrelations between Social and Economic Change in Rural Africa: the Case of the Ovimbundu of Angola’ in Franz-Wilhelm Heimer, ed., Social Change in Angola (Weltforum Verlag, 1973); Leroy Vail and Landeg White, ‘Tawani, Machambero! Forced Cotton and Rice Growing on the Zambesi’, JAH, XIX (1978);
Tony Barnett, ‘Troduction of Cotton and the Reproduction of Underdevelopment’ in Ivar Oxaal, ed., Beyond the Sociology of Development (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); John Tosh, ‘Lango Agriculture during the Early Colonial Period: Land and Labour in a Cash-Crop Economy’, JAH, XIX (1978) and
E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo, ‘The Rise and Decline of the Kenya Peasant’ in P. Gutkind and P. Waterman, eds, African Social Studies: A Radical Reader (Heinemann, 1977).
On white settlers, a standard work is M.P.K. Sorrenson, Origins of White Settlement in Kenya (Oxford University Press, 1968).
See also Frank Füredi, ‘Kikuyu Squatters in the Rift Valley 1918–29’ in Bethwell Ogot, ed., Hadith, V (1972). The settler land problem is the focus of
Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Heine-mann, 1977). There is an excellent survey of the economy of settlerdom in the Congo: Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘Le còlonat agricole européen au Congo belge 1910–60’, JAH, XX (1979). On a large plantation system,
Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Capitalism and Colonialism in Mozambique (Heine-mann, 1980) is outstanding.
The ecological aspect of colonial agriculture has been opened up by the work of Helge Kjekshus: Ecology Control and Economic Development in East Africa (Heinemann, 1977), See also Leroy Vail, ‘Ecology and Society: the Example of Eastern Zambia’, JSAS, III (1977). On a related subject there is Bob Shenton and Mike Watts, ‘Capitalism and Hunger in Northern Nigeria’, Review of African Political Economy, 15/16, 1979.
Colonial mining is much less well-served than agriculture in the literature. Charles van Onselen made a major breakthrough in placing the mines in the context of African labour and social history in Chibaro: African Mines Labour in Southern Rhodesia, (Pluto Press, 1976). See also Agwu Akpala, ‘Background of the Enugu Colliery Shooting Incident of 1949’, JHSN, III (1965); Bruce Fetter, ‘L’Union Minière du Haut-Katanga 1920–40: naissance d’une sous-culture totalitaire’, Cahiers du CEDAF, VI (1973); Charles Perrings, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa (Heinemann, 1979);
Bill Freund, Capital and Labour in the Nigerian Tin Mines (Longman, 1981).
The history of colonial capitalist enterprise in Africa is far better developed in French than in English as note the work of Suret-Canale and Coquery-Vidrovitch. Business receives acute attention in the special edition of the Revue française d’histoire d’outremer, LXIII (1976), edited by Coquery-Vidrovitch, entitled ‘L’Afrique et la crise de 1930’. She has also written the important article: ‘L’impact des intérêts coloniaux: SGOA et CFAO dans l’Ouest africain 1910–65’, JAH, XVI (1975). A standard source for Belgian Africa is P. Joye and R. Lewin, Les trusts au Congo (Brussels, 1961). On narrower aspects of capitalism in Central Africa there is
S.E. Katzenellenbogen, Railways and the Copper Mines of Katanga (Clarendon Press, 1973); Lewis Gann, ‘The Northern Rhodesián Copper Industry and the World of Copper’, RLIJ,XVUl (1955) and Peter Slinn, ‘Commercial Concessions and Politics During the Colonial Period: The Role of the British South Africa Company in Northern Rhodesia 1890–1964’, AA LXX (1971).
The trading minorities of colonial Africa have generally been described rather than analysed but see: Dharam Ghai, ed., Portrait of a Minority: Asians in East Africa (Oxford University Press, 1970); John Zarwan, ‘The Social and Economic Network of an Indian Family Business in Kenya 1920–70’, Kroneik van Afrika, N.S. VI (1975); R. Bayly Winder, ‘The Lebanese in West Africa’, CSSH, IV (1962) and Fuad Khury, ‘Kinship, Emigration and Trade Partnership among the Lebanese of West Africa’, Africa, XXV (1965).
Michael Crowder has emphasised the importance of indirect rule as a mechanism of British domination in colonial Africa, notably in the edited collection, Crowder and Obaro Ikime, eds, West African Chiefs (University of If e Press, 1970). His views have been criticised in M. SemakulaKiwanuka, ‘Colonial Policies and Administrations: the Myth of Contrasts’, AHS, III (1970), For other assessments see Hubert Deschamps, ‘Et maintenant, Lord Lugard, Africa, XXXIII (1963) and
L. F. Nicolson, The Administration of Nigeria (Clarendon Press, 1969).
There are numerous, generally narrowly administrative, case studies especially for Nigeria. The best-known include J.A. Atanda, The New Oyo Empire (Longman, 1973);
Philip Igbafe, Benin under British Administration (Longman, 1979);
Adamu Fika, The Kano Civil War and British Overrule, 1882–1940 (Oxford University Press, 1978);
A.I. Asiwaju, Western Yorubaland under European Rule (Longman, 1976) and, on the Gold Coast,
William Tordoff, Ashanti under the Prempehs, 1888–1935 (Oxford University Press, 1965). The most penetrating is
A.E. Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs (Longman, 1972). Other areas are examined in Michael Twaddle, ‘The Bakungu Chiefs of Buganda under British Colonial Rule, 1900–30’, JAH, X (1969) and
Gerald Caplan, The Elites of Barotseland (C. Hurst, 1970).
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© 1984 Bill Freund
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Freund, B. (1984). The Material Basis of Colonial Society, 1900–1940. In: The Making of Contemporary Africa. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17332-7_6
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