Politics, Profits and Protection

Zimbabwe’s agrarian history has attracted robust scholarly attention over time. Much of it has, however, focused on encounters between white settler farmers and Africans over control of resources. Scholars have also focused on how the postcolonial state has undermined the country’s agricultural sector through unsound policy interventions, notably the chaotic land reform programme of 2000. In both cases, emphasis is placed on the role of the state, either colonial or postcolonial, in propping up or undermining the country’s agro-based economy. While this is an indispensable approach, Politics, profits, and protection: Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry since 1947 provides an alternative yet complementary way of looking at the development of agriculture in Zimbabwe. The book uses the case of Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry to situate white settler agriculture in the broader context of post-Second World War British imperial policy and, to an extent, American foreign economic policy, decolonisation, and global tobacco trade politics. It concludes by highlighting policy continuities and discontinuities across the colonial-postcolonial divide. By pursuing these matters, the book makes a significant contribution to Zimbabwe’s economic history and to the growing literature on settler-colonial and postcolonial studies, with broader implications for regional and international trade debates. To achieve this, it draws on an extensive coverage of archives in Zimbabwe and South Africa, coupled with relevant newspaper reports, interviews, and industry publications.

Reviewer’s Comments

This is a well written work with a clear narrative line…It is a veritable source of information for the tobacco industry watchers, historians, political economists, agriculture economists, economists, and political scientists.
Professor Olutayo Adesina, Department of History, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

This study…brings a rather fresh perspective to the scholarship on tobacco production in colonial Zimbabwe. It does so by not only making use of hitherto unused sources (Smith papers), but also by demonstrating how specific dynamics on the global front affected tobacco production, pricing, marketing as well as their overall bearing on tobacco farmers in the country. This is a very useful contribution to the existing body of knowledge on colonial agriculture generally and particularly on tobacco production in the country.
Dr Tapiwa Madimu, Department of History, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa

Part of the African Humanities Series