Building better people: modernity and utopia in late colonial Tanganyika

Abstract

This article explores development policy in colonial Tanganyika in the late 1940s and 1950s. It argues that the increased interventionism of this period reflected not just a desire by colonial authorities to regulate the actions and behaviour of Tanganyikans, but sought to create new, "modern" identities. In regarding "the African" as the key challenge facing development planners, increasingly coercive measures were justified to enforce change that would ultimately benefit those communities being targeted. Development in Tanganyika in the 1940s and 1950s was at heart an attempt to create a new form of society, a new identity, forged by the state, and oriented towards the vision of that state. It explores the extent to which development processes in Tanganyika in this period, and more generally, function as a "coercive utopia".

Keywords:

• Tanganyika
• development
• community development
• community centres
• Coercion

Acknowledgements

A draft of this article was presented as a paper at the African Studies Seminar, Oxford University, in 2006. I would like to thank David Anderson for comments on earlier drafts, and Stephen Ellis for comments on a different paper which led to the focus on development as a coercive utopia.

Notes

1. Acting Provincial Commissioner Dodoma to Chief Secretary, Dar es Salaam, June 5, 1947. Tanzania National Archives (hereafter TNA) 33026. He was replying to the British Colonial Office's call for ideas on how to achieve rapid economic and social development in Africa.

2. Austen, African Economic History, 197.

3. Fieldhouse, Black Africa, 6.

4. Freund, Making of Contemporary Africa, 136.

5. Its position as standard-bearer for the failure of colonial development planning is, however, debatable: it originated in the British Ministry of Foods as a plan to boost fat supplies in the metropole, and was resisted by the Colonial Office who argued it would not meet the needs of Tanganyika. Whilst "development" rhetoric was used in its defence, it was never really a development intervention in a real sense. See Wood, The Groundnut Affair; Hogendorn and Scott, "Very Large-Scale Agricultural Projects"; and Iliffe, Modern History, chapter 14.

6. Such beliefs did not, of course, preclude the possibility that planners thought British interests could also be served in a re-formulation of the old "dual mandate."

7. Low and Lonsdale, "Introduction: Towards the New Order, 1945-63," 1-63.

8. Cooper, Africa Since 1940, 20.

9. Cooper, Africa Since 1940, 91-2.

10. Iliffe, Modern History, 473.

11. Meredith, "The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy, 1919-39," 485.

12. Lee, "'Forward Thinking' and War: The Colonial Office during the 1940s," 66.

13. Lee, "'Forward Thinking' and War: The Colonial Office during the 1940s," 68.

14. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 89.

15. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 2.

16. Young, "The African Colonial State and its Political Legacy," 59.

17. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 4-5.

18. "Community Betterment in Africa," no author, no date, but is possibly the 1949 pamphlet Explanatory Pamphlet in Mass Education, 1 (note, the pages are not in order, page numbers refer to order in the file). TNA 38694 v.II.

19. Secretary of State for Colonies (hereafter ColSec) to Governor Gold Coast, September 19, 1949, 1. TNA 38694, v.II

20. Cited in Morgan, Official History, 59.

21. Cited in Morgan, Official History, 66.

22. Colonial Office to Tanganyika Territory, 28 April 1944. TNA 33026.

23. Hailey, An African Survey, 1194.

24. Hailey, An African Survey, 1278.

25. Cited in Morgan, Official History, 59.

26. Colonial Office to Officer Administering Tanganyika, October 5, 1953. TNA 38694 v.III.

27. ColSec, Memorandum to African Administrations, February 22, 1947. TNA 33026.

28. Tanganyika to ColSec, draft response to Colonial Office circular despatch of February 22 and July 26, 1947, 7. TNA 33026.

29. District Officer, Kondoa, cited in Ag Provincial Commissioner Dodoma to Chief Secretary, Dar es Salaam, June 5, 1947. TNA 33026.

30. United Nations, United Kingdom Dependent Territories, 59. TNA 38694 v.III.

31. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 97.

32. Draft letter to ColSec, no date but probably 1948. TNA 33026.

33. ColSecto Tanganyika, July 13, 1948. TNA 33026.

34. Director of Agricultural Production (R.W.R. Miller), response to Colonial Office Despatch No. 43, June 12, 1947. TNA 33026.

35. Draft letter to ColSec, no date but probably 1948. TNA Secretarial File 33026.

36. Director of Agricultural Production, response to Colonial Office Despatch No. 43, June 12, 1947. TNA 33026.

37. ColSec to Tanganyika, July 13, 1948. TNA 33026.

38. ColSec to Tanganyika, July 13, 1948. TNA 33026.

39. Tanganyika to ColSec, draft response to Colonial Office circular despatch of February 22, July 26, 1947, 2. TNA 33026.

40. Director of Agricultural Production, Response to Colonial Office Despatch No. 43, June 12, 1947. TNA 33026.

41. Director of Agricultural Production, Response to Colonial Office Despatch No. 43, June 12, 1947. TNA 33026.

42. District Officer, Kondoa, cited in Ag Provincial Commissioner Dodoma to Chief Secretary, Dar es Salaam, June 5, 1947. TNA 33026.

43. Director of Agricultural Production, response to Colonial Office Despatch No. 43, June 12, 1947. TNA 33026.

44. Deputy Chair Development Commission, Bruce Hutt, to Provincial Commissioners, December 8, 1947. TNA 465 D/3

45. Chair, Local Development Loan Fund Committee, "Notes on some successful loans." TNA 465 D/3.

46. DC Hill (Officer i/c African Housing Loans and Investment), Circular No. 9, September 2, 1958; Member for Local Government to Provincial Commissioner Lake Province, January 19, 1959. TNA 465 D/3. "Training" did not include higher education.

47. H.A. Fosbrooke, Government Anthropologist, "Sociological Study of Land Usage in the Highlands Area of Northern Tanganyika," October 2, 1950, 1. TNA 33026.

48. Cliffe, "Nationalism and Reaction" Kimambo, Penetration and Protest in Tanzania; Japhet and Spear, "Struggles for the Land: Mount Meru"; Maack "'We Don't Want Terraces'"; Spear, Mountain Farmers, chapters 7 and 11.

49. Coulson, "Agricultural Policies in Tanzania 1946-76," 52-89.

50. Member for Local Government to Provincial Commissioners, Circular No. 1, January 1951, 1. TNA 32999 v.II.

51. Social Welfare Organiser, Report for the Development of Social Welfare Department, August 18, 1949, 1. TNA 32999 v.II.

52. Ag Chief Secretary (Hall), Memorandum for Executive Council, no date, but c.1952, 4. TNA 32999 v.III.

53. Dancing for example seemingly "incurred the hostility of missionaries." United Nations, United Kingdom Dependent Territories, 59. TNA 38694 v.III. On colonial attitudes to alcohol amongst African communities, see Willis, Potent Brews.

54. United Nations, United Kingdom Dependent Territories, p.59. TNA 38694 v.III.

55. United Nations, United Kingdom Dependent Territories, p.59. TNA 38694 v.III.

56. United Nations, United Kingdom Dependent Territories, p.59. TNA 38694 v.III.

57. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, 254-67 in particular.

58. Scott, Seeing Like a State.

59. Brzezinski, "The New Dimensions of Human Rights," 167.

60. Brzezinski, "The New Dimensions of Human Rights," 167.

61. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 89.

62. Judith Listowel, "Action for Development Report on Villagisation," June 1975. Christian Aid Archives CA2/A/26/7.

63. Judith Listowel, "Action for Development Report on Villagisation," June 1975. Christian Aid Archives CA2/A/26/7.

64. For an assessment of the role of NGOs in justifying the coercive nature of villagisation, see Jennings, Surrogates of the State.

65. Julius Nyerere, "President's Inaugural Address," in Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, 177.

66. Julius Nyerere, "President's Inaugural Address," in Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, 177.

67. Ministry of Cooperative & Community Development, Annual Report, 1963. TNA 465 D3/18.

68. Ferguson, Anti-Politics Machine, 255-6.