Abstract
This chapter is devoted specifically to outlining the development of a plantation (estate) economy during the early decades of the twentieth century. Morris highlights the dilemmas of the colonial state with respect to its economic strategies, namely whether to encourage the supply of labour to the South African mines (simply making the protectorate a ‘labour reserve’), or peasant agriculture, or a plantation economy. Morris contends that the colonial state always supported the plantation sector, but two factors were crucial in its development: the influx of large numbers of Lomwe people into the Shire Highlands from Mozambique; and the introduction and consolidation of a system of forced labour rent, widely known as thangata.
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Morris, B. (2016). The Plantation Economy. In: An Environmental History of Southern Malawi. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45258-6_5
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