The Groundnut Scheme Revisited Colonial Disaster and African Accumulation in Nachingwea District, Southeastern Tanzania, 1946-67

Rizzo, Matteo (2004) The Groundnut Scheme Revisited Colonial Disaster and African Accumulation in Nachingwea District, Southeastern Tanzania, 1946-67. PhD thesis, University of London.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the developmental legacy of the infamous East African Groundnut Scheme on the economy of the Southern Province of Tanganyika. It shows that its implementation, notwithstanding the scheme's failure to succeed in the production of hundred of thousands of peanuts per year, marked the first moment in history in which the Southern Province benefited from high levels of economic investment. This investment had profound consequences on its economy. The thesis investigates the way in which a number of actors, who had their roots in the socio-economic history of the area, competed with the scheme implementers to influence the shape the scheme took once implemented. The first chapter focuses on the labour market growth generated by the scheme in the period 1947-1952. It reconstructs the political battle between the colonial state and the scheme implementers over control of labour market growth, and then assesses its socio-economic impact on rural areas of the Southern Province. In the second chapter the unit of analysis narrows to one of the districts of the Province: Nachingwea. The chapter analyses two aspects of rural development in the late colonial period and the early independence period. First, the ideology and performance of the African Tenant Scheme, the offspring of the groundnut scheme, will be assessed. Local politics played, yet again, a crucial role in its failure. Second, the chapter documents the increasing commercialisation of agriculture in the district, and the socio-economic differentiation between and within areas of the district that accompanied it. The last two chapters of the thesis focus on the life histories of ten entrepreneurs who began a career of capital accumulation during, and thanks to, the groundnut scheme. The focus is on their strategies of accumulation, and the way in which these entrepreneurs reshaped them following the end of the economic stimulus the scheme brought to the Southern Province. Nine of them are presented in the third chapter, and the indepth analysis of the career of one of them follows in the fourth chapter. The thesis thus speaks to political economy of development practice, and to the interplay of structure and agency in African capital accumulation.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Nachingwea and the Southern Province of Tanganyika, A Southern Province history of the East African groundnut scheme 1946-1952, Rural development in the Nachingwea District in the late colonial and early post-colonial period, 1952-1967,Life histories in a nutshell, A peasant writes and speaks: the life history of Julius Mtenda's household in Nachingwea District 1922-67, The unintended consequences of development
Subjects: D History General and Old World > DT Africa
Divisions: Africana
Depositing User: JHI Africa
Date Deposited: 11 Apr 2014 08:09
Last Modified: 16 Mar 2018 06:01
URI: http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/59

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