Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 1 (2011), p. 144

In the last two decades, historians, political scientists and economists have paid a great deal of attention to the study of colonial rural development policies during the twentieth century in British and French colonies in Africa and elsewhere. One of their main conclusions was that there was a gradual shift from common notions of ‘laissez faire’ and indirect rule towards a more interventionist policy of ‘colonial development and welfare’, especially after World War Two. In these developmentalist initiatives, expert knowledge played a crucial role. Colonial historians and historians of science and technology have long been concerned about how and why authorities tried to stimulate ‘modernization’ and change in colonial territories. Various scholars stressed that agricultural expertise and science in colonies, far from representing a mere transfer of European scientific knowledge, took shape in the colonial context itself. The multi-layered role that science and expert knowledge played in the colonial enterprise is being exposed via case studies for several countries and colonial regions. Agricultural development policy and the introduction of modern western science aimed at replacing or correcting allegedly inefficient and destructive African ways of farming. In the past, many studies started from the assumptions that modern or western techniques and knowledge replaced or subordinated local habits, local farmers were exploited, and local creativity was suppressed. This evaluation resulted in an unbalanced picture that sketched African (or other colonized) farmers merely as retarded or as victims, and underestimated their creative potential, social resilience and individual agency. Recently, historians have argued more and more that development and economic growth in (former) colonies not only occurred as a result of colonial development plans, but also independently of them.

Rohland Schuknecht’s research accords with these conclusions. This book is the published version of his doctoral thesis, which was submitted at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2008. The author studies British colonial development policy after the Second World War in detail and examines the results of its application. As a case study he takes Sukumaland, a region of about 18,000 square miles and one million inhabitants in north-western Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania). This region was once part of the colony of German East Africa but came under British rule after World War I. This was confirmed by a League of Nations Mandate, later becoming a United Nations Trust Territory (Tanganyika achieved independence in 1961). Sukumaland was one of the tropical areas where Britain unfolded a variety of colonial rural development interventions. Schuknecht describes and analyses this development narrative successfully. Moreover, he does not treat the region as a ‘development island’, but approaches it as part of the wider imperial and territorial framework of British colonialism. Schuknecht has consulted archives in Tanzania (in the national capital of Dar Es Salaam and in the region of Mwanza) and at the National Archives in Kew.

In his book Schuknecht formulates a number of interesting conclusions. In official reports and debates the British stressed the importance of constitutional development, local government reform, labour market reforms, rural and industrial modernization and the expansion of education and social services. Agricultural policy was based on two major objectives: augmenting production and preserving ecological stability. Colonial experts and scientists attempted to correct inefficient and destructive African ways of land and resource use, and to restrict the movement of people and livestock. They wanted to replace the existing Sukuma practices of agriculture and animal husbandry with a more modern mixed farming, in order to conserve natural resources and to increase productivity at the same time. All this was achieved by compulsion.

In practice, though, British colonial officials and experts were rather unwilling to introduce new measures that could undermine the old systems of peasant agriculture and indirect rule that were well established during the interwar period. It is clear that colonial agricultural experts wanted to improve and to amend agricultural practices in Sukumaland, rather than to change them radically. Nevertheless the agricultural system was modernised, for example via initiatives towards large-scale mechanisation and cooperative marketing, but mostly these were African enterprises rather than discrete colonial policies. Schuknecht demonstrates convincingly that rural modernisation in Sukumaland often occurred not as a result of development efforts but independently or contrary to them. One example of this is that, while colonial officials still regarded self-sufficiency in food as an integral part of the local peasant agriculture, many Sukuma farmers concentrated increasingly on the cultivation of cotton, as food could be bought easily in markets and in shops because farmers got good prices for their cash crops.

The above-mentioned conclusions demonstrate the limited scope and influence of colonial development plans, especially in the long term. Colonial developers treated Sukumaland as a laboratory for agricultural development; they judged the Sukuma practices of land and resource use as (environmentally) dangerous and backward. They had a blind faith in the worth of western ‘scientific’ agriculture, but many of these western ideas and concepts often proved to be of limited value. One of the reasons for this failure was the lack of contact between colonial developers and Sukuma farmers. British, or Western scientists in general, regarded themselves as agents of progress, while perceiving local farmers as backward and lazy. Although Sukuma farmers generally did not respond to colonial rural development policies and recommendations of experts in the desired way, these initiatives had a profound impact. They eroded the fragile consensus on which the colonial system was built, for instance by demonstrating that local chiefs were puppets of the colonial system. The new African political and economic elites used this sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s to show that colonial development initiatives were not in the interest of the common people. This prepared the ground for Sukumaland and Tanganyika’s final transition to independence.