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- Convenors:
-
Jelmer Vos
(University of Glasgow)
Samuël Coghe (Ghent University)
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- Stream:
- Economy and Development
- Location:
- 50 George Square, G.05
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel examines the formation, implementation and interaction of global and local bodies of ecological knowledge at different commodity frontiers in modern Africa, paying special attention to agriculture and animal husbandry.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the role knowledge of ecological landscapes played in the creation of commodity frontiers in modern Africa, with special attention to agriculture and animal husbandry. In recent decades, several historians and social scientists have used the concept of 'commodity frontiers' to study the expansion of global capitalism during the last 500 years. These scholars especially examine how, at the margins of an expanding world economy, land, labour and capital were reallocated to transform available resources into commodities for global markets. But commodity production also depended on intimate knowledge of the natural landscape, as local environments not only offered commercial opportunities but also posed constraints related to climate, diseases, and soil quality. Moreover, human intervention in the landscape often created new constraints. Because of these environmental challenges, commodity frontiers were sites of experimentation, adaptation and constant innovation. Focussing on the period after 1800, when Africa's integration in the global economy accelerated, this panel examines how knowledge of local ecologies was generated in and outside the continent and implemented to produce goods for global markets, especially cash crops and livestock. The panel thus aims to highlight the agency of African farmers and cattle-herders as much as the expertise of colonial botanists, agronomists, and veterinary scientists. We welcome contributions from all disciplines shedding light on the different local and global bodies of knowledge underpinning the expansion of African commodity frontiers in the modern era.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Samuël Coghe (Ghent University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the introduction of trypanotolerant cattle in several parts of French Equatorial Africa during late colonialism. It focuses on the role of new bodies of expert knowledge on local ecosystems, cattle disease susceptibilities and cattle farming techniques in this process.
Paper long abstract:
After the Second World War, French colonial veterinary doctors started to introduce, acclimatise and breed trypanotolerant cattle in several regions of French Equatorial Africa (AEF) where cattle farming had thus far been deemed impossible due to endemic animal trypanosomiasis. Inspired by similar successful experiments in the neighbouring Belgian Congo, they believed that, if carefully prepared, the extension of the 'pastoral frontier' could be made possible - and would in the long run constitute a major contribution to solving the intertwined problems of malnutrition, underpopulation and economic underdevelopment.
This paper analyses the rationalities, practicalities and consequences of this experiment. It thereby pays particular attention to the role of expert knowledge. Indeed, the extension of the 'pastoral frontier' into the humid savannas of French Equatorial Africa was not only a huge logistical operation, which involved the purchase, transport and acclimatisation of thousands of trypanotolerant animals from West Africa and the Belgian Congo. It also hinged on the production and mobilisation of new bodies of expert knowledge on local ecosystems (ranging from soil and vegetation types to the exact distribution of tsetse flies and trypanosomes and the varying disease susceptibilities of different breeds of cattle) and cattle farming techniques that were thus far virtually unknown in the region. Here, the paper also shows how European companies, African villagers as well as migrant African herders bought into this project, as they tried to benefit from the opportunities it raised.
Eduard Gargallo (ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyse how scientific discourse and policies dealing with crops and livestock were established in early colonial Zimbabwe, which ideas and practices became accepted as scientifically sound, and, therefore, how 'local' agricultural knowledge was developed.
Paper long abstract:
In the context of European expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) became a white settlement colony which was expected to develop a strong agricultural sector. The aim of this paper is to analyse how scientific discourse and policies dealing with crops and animal husbandry were established in Rhodesia, which ideas and practices became accepted as scientifically sound, and who was expected to master this scientific expertise.
Our findings are in line with recent historiography dealing with the development of colonial science, the evolution of sciences in colonial contexts and the production of 'local knowledge' which is gradually becoming more nuanced. Interactions as well as contradictions between local and Imperial knowledge are highlighted, together with the partial incorporation of African knowledge into scientists' ideas.
Through the analysis of agricultural, and especially veterinary, research and its application before the First World War, we will see how the links and collaboration between international, Imperial, and local institutions and individuals was far from unproblematic; how the relationship between scientists and the growing number of European farmers was often conflictive; and how scientists' views of African knowledge and practices was ambiguous and contradictory.
Rhodesian agricultural and veterinary science and policies went through a process of gradual 'localisation' in the years before the First World War and Rhodesia provides an example of how 'local' knowledge was being developed in the African 'frontier' and how this knowledge informed agricultural and export policies that have remained influential to this very day.
Sven Van Melkebeke
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine the continuities and changes between two labor coercive cotton schemes. Cultivators in the Eastern Congo offer a good testing ground to highlight both the top-down (re)implementation of these schemes and the bottom-up feedback (resistance, adaptation) of local peasants.
Paper long abstract:
In order to force Congolese peasants to produce for the export market, the Belgian colonial government implemented a system of compulsory cultivation in 1917. Peasants had to produce a certain cash crop within a given timeframe and against a meager wage. But in the 1930s, such a harsh regime had caused a rural exodus. In response, the administration attempted to improve rural conditions and introduced a new program aimed at revolutionizing African agriculture: the paysannats indigènes. These 'indigenous peasantry schemes' were voluntary according to the colonial discourse. The schemes were scientifically-based and allegedly aimed to increase land productivity, fight erosion, raise revenue and improve peasants' living conditions. Peasants who signed up were allocated a plot of land and had to cultivate crops following the rules (e.g. regarding rotation, intercropping, labor organization) dictated by European agronomists, and often in contrast with local knowledge. However, in reality, the paysannats were designed to reestablish control over the peasantry while keeping the peasant outside the market.
This paper will examine the continuities and changes between these two labor coercive regimes. Cotton cultivators in the Eastern Congo offer a good testing ground to highlight both top-down (re)implementation and bottom-up feedback (resistance, adaptation) of local peasants. The region around Bambesa (Bas-Uele) suffered from harsh cotton extraction in the period after 1917 under the compulsory cultivation scheme, followed by a scientifically-framed scheme after WWII that was as restrictive albeit more sophisticated.
Jelmer Vos (University of Glasgow) Aaron Davis (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines contrasting sets of knowledge about coffee cultivation in Angola from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines different bodies of knowledge about coffee cultivation in Angola from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. First, it surveys African ways of cultivating robusta coffee as they developed from the 1820s onward, and highlights the anthropogenic nature of the Angolan landscape, in contrast to the early colonial notion of a 'pristine' coffee forest. Second, it analyses the development of western scientific knowledge of the Angolan coffee landscape, culminating in the reintroduction by colonial botanists of foreign-bred robusta specimen in the 1920s. Finally, it contrasts the botanists' appreciation of African expertise in coffee growing with their criticism of the ways a new generation of European settlers planted coffee.