Feeding and Fleecing the Native: How the Nyasaland Transport System Distorted a New Food Market, 1890s–1920s

Abstract

Failed states in Africa are not a uniquely postcolonial phenomenon: The colonial government in Nyasaland started and ended as a failed state. Although effective in guarding Britain's global interests against her imperial rivals, the Nyasaland government could not be relied upon as a trustworthy ally of any social class within the country. The government failed to provide essential services, particularly roads, with dire consequences for both the peasant economy and European enterprises. Without a reliable road network, transport companies came to depend on the vagaries of the weather and the availability of villagers to carry goods on their heads. Transporters competed with planters and other European enterprises for cheap labour, instituting a costly freight regime that discouraged planters from raising bulky, low-value food crops. Thus, to feed their workers, all European enterprises – farmers, missionaries, traders, transport companies and the government – turned to peasant-grown food. Responding to these demands without the benefit of new agricultural technologies that could have raised productivity, peasants sold the food that their families needed and began to experience new forms of hunger. The food deficits forced the same European planters who assaulted the peasant economy as a system of labour usage to realise the need to preserve it as a system of food supply. Such was the nature of the colonial regime in Nyasaland that stimulating and undermining the peasant option did not form two separate processes, occupying two distinct phases. In Nyasaland, the inefficient transport system, like the estate sector, simultaneously both strengthened and weakened peasant production.

The mere feeding of all these [workers] is a problem in itself. (Life and Work in British Central Africa, September 1905)

The road question seems to be among the thorny problems which beset this country. (The Central African Times, 6 October 1900)

Notes

^*Part of a larger study, The End of Chidyerano: A History of Food and Everyday Life in Malawi, 1860-2004 (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2005), this article is dedicated to the memory of Leroy Vail who taught us so much and so eloquently about the cruel consequences of imperialism-on-the-cheap in Malawi. The larger project benefited from the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Dean's Office at the University of Rochester. I am also indebted to Joseph Inikori, William Hauser, Dean Miller, Jesse Moore and the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on the original draft.

 1 C. Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London, Heinemann, 1979); C. Bundy, ‘The Emergence and Decline of a South African Peasantry’, African Affairs, 71, 285 (October, 1972), pp. 369–88; R. Palmer and N. Parsons (eds), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1977).

 2 For other assessments, see T.O. Ranger, ‘Growing from the Roots: Reflections on Peasant Research in Central and Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS), 5, 1 (October 1978), pp. 99–133; J. Lewis, ‘The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry: A Critique and Reassessment’, JSAS, 11, 1 (October 1984), pp. 1–24.

 3 Life and Work in British Central Africa [hereafter cited as LWBCA], October 1891.

 4 LWBCA, June 1898. Some travellers did not go through Blantyre, instead they followed a footpath parallel to the Tchiri River, from the Mamvera Rapids near Katunga, to Matope.

 5 ‘Zembezi’ is the African and de-anglicised form for the familiar ‘Zambesi’.

 6 See, among others, The Central African Times (CAT), 23 December 1905; 21 April 1900. The newspaper changed its name to Nyasaland Times (NT) in 1906, when British Central Africa became Nyasaland.

 7 LWBCA, July 1895.

 8 CAT, 10 November 1900; 29 June 1901; LWBA, December 1891; November 1899; January 1900.

 9 CAT, 26 May (?) 1900; 4 March 1905; 15 December 1906.

 10 CAT, 6 October 1900; 26 March 1904.

 11 CAT, 26 May (?) 1900; 10 March; 8 and 15 December 1906.

 13 LWBCA, November–December 1912.

 12 LWBCA, September 1905. See CAT, 10 October 1903 for settlers’ attempts to understand the changes in the levels of Lake Malawi and the Tchiri River. One reviewer suggested that the changes resulted from seismic activity.

 14 LWBCA, November–December 1912.

 15 CAT, 21 April 1900; 26 March and 9 April 1904; 19 August 1905.

 16 CAT, 31 March and 21 April 1900.

 17 CAT, 12 and 26 May 1900.

 18 CAT, 6 October 1900.

 19 CAT, 6 October 1900.

 20 CAT, 6 October 1900; CAT, 3 February, 7 March, 1 and 7 April, 5, 19 and 26 May, 2 and 16 June, 1 December 1905; 26 May and 8 December 1906. For more information on lions and tsetse fly in the Dabanyi and elsewhere in the country, see CAT, 14 April and 28 July 1900; 29 October 1904; 1 April, 19 August and 23 December 1905; 24 and 31 March, 7 and 11 April, 19 May and 2, 16 and 30 June 1906; 12 January, 23 March and 8 June 1911.

 21 LWBCA, January 1903.

 22 LWBCA, October 1898. The government justified this discrimination on the grounds that it discouraged women from roadwork.

 26 LWBCA, January–March 1901.

 23 LWBCA, October 1898; January–March 1901.

 24 LWBCA, April 1900.

 25 LWBCA, January–March 1901.

 27 CAT, 6 October 1900.

 33 LWBCA, July–September 1901.

 28 LWBCA, April–June 1901, January 1903; October and November 1900.

 29 Between 10,000 and 15,000 carriers died each month during the East African campaign in 1918 (LWBCA, January–March 1918).

 30 LWBCA, April–December 1917.

 31 LWBCA, July–Sept 1901; May 1903; CAT, 5 May 1900.

 32 Theft by carriers became especially common during the hungry season between December and April: CAT, 10 and 17 February; 3 March 1900; 5 March 1904; NT, 10 January 1918.

 34 CAT, 19 January 1901.

 35 CAT, 12 January 1901.

 36 LWBCA, September 1905; July–September 1901. In 1905, Chiromo had 80 European residents, and 11,000 of the district's African population of 18,500 were wage labourers (including 5,000 workers on cotton estates).

 37 CAT, 26 May 1900.

 38 CAT, 26 May 1900.; LWBCA (October–December 1911) provides the following demographics for the country: 969,183 Africans, 766 Europeans, including 107 planters, and 481 ‘Asiatics’.

 39 LWBCA, July 1903.

 40 LWBCA, January 1900.

 41 CAT, 26 May (?)1900; LWBCA, October 1895.

 42 LWBCA, July 1894; CAT, 13 October, 10 November 1900; 5 January 1901.

 43 CAT, 31 March and 12 May 1906; see also CAT, 5 March 1906.

 44 LWBCA, March 1906.

 45 NT, 21 December 1911.

 46 LWBCA, March 1900.

 47 For complaints about the high freight rates, see Malawi National Archives (hereafter MNA), A2/1/3, Report on Nyasaland Cotton, 24 April 1909, see also MNA, A2/1/4, African Lakes Company Report, 1 March 1911, [?]; McCall to Deputy Governor, 3 March 1911; MNA, A1/1/3, BCGA to [?], 3 December 1912; and CAT, 5 October 1901.

 48 CAT, 11 February 1905.

 49 CAT, 16 July 1904; 14 April 1906.

 50 NT, 25 July 1912 (see also NT, 29 August 1912). The actual figures given in the newspaper are: 2 lbs. of flour per day, 2 lbs. of beans per week and 4 ounces of salt per week. In 1919 the Public Works Department needed 750 tons to feed its 3,000 workers in 6 months (NT, 17 December 1919).

 51 CAT, 22 July, 30 December 1905.

 52 CAT, 31 December 1904; 25 February, 5 March 1905; NT, 9 February 1921. Some planters intermittently tried to raise food for their workers (CAT, 5 January 1901). Towards the end of the First World War, the government asked European farmers to devote at least 25 per cent of their land to maize. They reluctantly agreed to do this, producing 3,000 tons, which they considered a great service to the country (NT, 25 July, 28 November 1918; 18 December 1919).

 53 Planters were so committed to this division of labour that they wanted some, if not all ‘hut taxes’ to be paid in food: ‘If the native had to pay his taxes in kind there would be such an abundance of food as to render that commodity very much cheaper and this would be an advantage when the total expense is summed up’ (CAT, 3 November 1900).

 54 C.H.S. Ng'ong'ola, ‘Statutory Law and Agrarian Change in Malawi’ (Ph.D. thesis, London University, 1983).

 55 The same planters also criticised missionaries for failing to teach agriculture in their schools: CAT, 12 May 1900. For the ‘food-versus-cash-crop’ theory, see M. Vaughan, The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in Twentieth-Century Malawi (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), chapters 1 and 3.

 56 NT, 4 December 1919. The rules included a ban on curing barns on Crown Land. See also MNA, A2/2/1, McCall, Cotton Growing by Natives, 1909; McCall, Report on Nyasaland Cotton, 24 April 1909; McCall to British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA), 3 December 1910.

 57 NT, 28 November 1918. When it became clear that they could not stop peasant cotton agriculture – supported by the powerful British Cotton Growing Association – some settlers qualified their earlier resistance, arguing that they discouraged cotton cultivation by peasants only in some but not in every region of the country. They also urged the government to promote peasant rice growing: ‘[E]ncouragement also should be given to rice growing as being of great value to the native community of workers and cheap rice would largely help to over come the difficulty at Blantyre and Limbe’ (NT, 6 January 1921).

 58 NT, 23 and 27 October 1919.

 59 NT, 28 November and 25 July 1918.

 60 NT, 4 December 1919.

 61 NT, 1 April 1920; see also NT, 18 April 1918.

 62 NT, 4 March 1920.

 63 They more commonly accused peasants of ‘improvidence’. See LWBCA, November–December 1912; South African Pioneer (hereafter cited as SAP) 26 (July 1913), p. 105.

 64 See, for example, N.R. Bennett and M. Ylvisaker (eds), The Central African Journal of Lovell Procter, 1860–64 (Boston, Boston University Press, 1971), pp. 176, 185, 277; R. Foskett (ed.), The Zambesi Journal of Dr. John Kirk, 1858–1863 (2 vols) (London, Oliver and Boyd, 1965), vol. 1, p. 192; D. and C. Livingstone, The Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries and of the Discoveries of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1866 [London, John Murray, 1865]), pp. 90, 113; H. Rowley, The Story of the Universities Mission to Central Africa (New York, Negro Universities Press, 1969 [1867]), pp. 179, 194–5; J.P.R. Wallis (ed.), The Zambesi Expedition of David Livingstone, 1858–63 (2 vols) (London, Chatto and Windus, 1956), vol. 1, p. 104; vol. 2, p. 246; Horace Waller Papers, MSS Afr s. 16, 10 vols and Horace Waller diaries (1860–64), 11 vols (Oxford University, Rhodes House), vol. 4:12 (29 June 1862), vol. 4:19 (21 August 1863).

 65 Livingstone, Narrative, p. 113.

 69 Bennett and Ylvisaker (eds), Central African Journal, p. 322.

 66 See, for example, Rowley, Story, p. 70.

 67 Rowley, Story, p. 71; see also p. 69 and Foskett (ed.), Zambesi Journal, vol. 1, p. 244.

 68 Livingstone, Narrative, p. 550.

 70 Wallis (ed.), Zambesi Expedition, vol. 1, p. 105.

 71 LWBCA, September 1891.

 72 LWBCA, February 1892; August–December 1891.

 73 LWBCA, November–December 1912; LWBCA, October 1895.

 74 LWBCA, November–December 1912.

 75 Ng'ong'ola, ‘Statutory Law and Agrarian Change in Malawi’.

 76 NT, 6 February 1913.

 79 LWBCA, April–December 1917.

 77 SAP, 26 (July 1913), p. 105.

 78 LWBCA, November–December 1912.

 80 NT, 21 November 1922; 10 January 1918.

 81 Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Chapter 6.

 82 Lewis, ‘The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry’, p. 20.

 83 Mandala, End of Chidyerano; Bundy, ‘Rise and Fall’.

 84 LWBCA, February 1892.

 85 LWBCA, July–September 1901.

 86 CAT, 12 May 1900.

 87 NT, 10 January 1918. Emphasis added.

 88 NT, 6 January 1921.

 89 See Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Chapters 2 and 4. For pre-1922 examples of hunger in the District, see, among others, CAT, 4 March 1905; NT, 5 October 1911.

 90 Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Chapters 1 and 2. The members of the Universities Mission to Central Africa began to feel the impact of the countrywide drought of 1862 only as they reached the Tchiri Valley.

 91 NT, 10 January 1918.

 92 Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Chapter 1.

 93 For the many laws that the state passed to drive labour to European farms, see, among others, E. Mandala, Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859–1960 (Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); B. Pachai, Malawi: The History of the Nation (London, Longman, 1973).

 94 CAT, 14 October 1905.

 95 CAT, 3 November 1900; NT, 28 December 1911.

 96 CAT, 14 April and 23 May 1901.

 97 CAT, 23 May and 5 January 1901; 3 November 1900.

 98 CAT, 25 May 1901.

 99 CAT, 25 May 1901.

 100 Neither did they blame nature – for a good reason. Settlers experienced absolute hunger no more than four times in the period between 1895 and 1923: 1900, 1903, 1911–1913 and 1922–1923. During the same period, however, floods destroyed crops in the Lower Tchiri Valley at least six times, in 1895, 1899, 1904, 1904–1905, 1908 and 1914 (CAT, 24 and 31 December 1904; 14 January 1905; 22 February 1908; 12 March 1914), while drought delayed planting or killed plants many more times. Although very few seasons saw rains come on time and in the right amount, absolute hunger affecting the whole country was rare.

 101 Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Introduction.

 104 CAT, 8 December 1900.

 102 LWBCA, July–September 1901; NT, 4 April 1912; CAT, 10 November 1900; 5 January 1901; NT, 5 October 1911; 6 February 1913; 7 June 1917.

 103 CAT, 12 May 1900. In 1918 a pound of rice cost 6d, putting it beyond the reach of many workers: NT, 10 January 1918. See also CAT, 5 January 1901; NT, 5 October 1911; 4 April 1912; 6 February 1913; 7 June 1917.

 106 LWBCA, February 1893.

 105 LWBCA, October and November 1900; January, March, April–June 1901; January–February 1912. The shortages led the missionaries to consider growing their own food: LWBCA, October–November 1900.

 107 This dilemma is in some ways similar to that facing the organisers of apartheid in South Africa: to ensure that the Bantustans remained healthy enough to reproduce labour but not prosperous enough to resist wage employment; see, among others, H. Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid’, Economy and Society, 1, 4 (1972), pp. 425–56.

 108 NT, 9 February 1921; 15 December 1922. Many Britons during the early colonial era felt Nyasaland was a happier place than India with its frequent and devastating famines: CAT, 7 July 1900; NT, 5 October 1911; 9 February 1921.

 109 NT, 10 January 1918; 15 December 1922.

 110 NT, 9 February 1921.

 111 NT, 9 February 1921. See also NT, 10 January 1918. They also campaigned for food preservation measures, ranging from the prohibition of beer-brewing for sale to a ban on food exports (CAT, 3 November 1900; NT, 5 October 1911; 7 June 1917). Planters also tried to encourage villagers to utilise fully their different micro-environments and to raise early-maturing crops such as sweet potatoes and cassava (CAT, 12 May 1900; 19 January 1907; NT, 9 February 1921). Some of their proposals were clearly misguided (CAT, 19 January 1907).

 112 NT, 5 October 1911; see also CAT, 12 May 1900.

 113 CAT, 7 July 1900.

 114 NT, 15 December 1922.

 116 CAT, 23 May 1901.

 115 NT, 17 January 1918.

 117 NT, 17 January 1918.

 118 Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Chapters 2 and 4.

 119 NT, 27 October 1919.

 120 NT, 17 June 1918.

 121 NT, 15 December 1922.

 122 NT, 15 December 1922.

 123 See Mandala, End of Chidyerano, Chapters 1, 2.

 124 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, ‘Malawi: OPEC Gives $5m for Road Upgrade’, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID.41032, retrieved 13 May 2004.

 125 Two observations are in order here. About five years ago, I had visitors from Malawi and, as usual, I drove them to Niagara Falls, which is about 90 miles from my home in Rochester, New York. On our way back, one of the visitors expressed his surprise at having seen no accident or disabled vehicles along the road. The second observation explains why he was puzzled. In 2001, my son and I drove from Blantyre to the Tchiri River on the Blantyre–Lilongwe Road, a distance of about 40 miles. That day we witnessed two fatal accidents, on a road that did not have a single traffic signal.