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ABSTRACT
Ecologizing regions; securing food: governing scarcity, population and territory in British East and Southern Africa. Territory, Politics, Governance. The focus is on the government of food systems in British East and Southern Africa in the mid-twentieth century, and the influence of ecological science on late colonial governmentality. The aim is to contribute to current debates emphasizing the need to uncover the political and historical specificities of territory, as well as to broaden the concept beyond its legal, political-economic and strategic features, and the bounded scale of the nation-state. It is argued that a focus on colonial problematizations of government, through the lens of food, contributes to these discussions in at least two ways: First, by producing substantive knowledge of a context under-examined in the literature on territory. Second, by contributing to the theorization of territory in broadening its ambit to include ecological knowledge and practices oriented towards the calculative political control of earth processes, and caring for various systemic relations between matter and life. Governing colonial food systems linked a range of economic and ecological problems and hence food provides a suitable lens to study the historical interrelations of biopolitical and geopolitical techniques.
摘要
生态化区域; 确保粮食: 治理英属东非与南非中的稀缺性，人口与领土。Territory, Politics, Governance. 本文聚焦英属东非与南非在二十世纪中期的粮食系统管理，以及生态科学对晚期殖民治理术的影响。本文目标在于强调必须揭露领土的政治与历史特殊性，并将该概念拓展至法律、政治、经济与策略特徵，以及国族国家的固定尺度之外，从而对当前的辩论做出贡献。本文主张，透过粮食的视角，聚焦治理的殖民问题化，至少可在两方面对上述讨论做出贡献。首先是透过生产领土文献中尚未充分检视的脉络之实质知识。再者，透过拓展领土的范围，纳入导向对地球过程的计算性政治控制之生态知识与实践，以及关照事物与生命之间多样的系统关系，从而对领土的理论化作出贡献。治理殖民时期的粮食系统，连结了一系列的经济与生态问题，粮食因而提供了一个研究生态政治与地缘政治技术的历史连结关系的适切观点。
RÉSUMÉ
Écologiser les régions; garantir les ressources alimentaires; administrer la pénurie, la population et le territoire en Afrique britannique orientale et méridionale. Territory, Politics, Governance. La présente communication est axée sur l’administration des systèmes alimentaires en Afrique britannique orientale et méridionale, au milieu du 20ème siècle, ainsi que sur l’influence des sciences écologiques sur l’ancienne gouvernementalité coloniale. L’objet est d’une part de contribuer aux débats actuels, en soulignant la nécessité de mettre à jour les spécificités politiques et historiques du territoire, d’autre part d’élargir le concept au-delà de ses aspects juridiques, politico-économiques, et stratégiques, et de l’envergure limitée de l’état-nation. On soutient qu’en mettant l’accent sur les problématisations coloniales du gouvernement, sous l’optique de l’alimentation, on contribue à ces discussions d’au moins deux façons: premièrement en produisant des connaissances substantielles d’un contexte peu examiné dans la documentation sur le territoire, deuxièmement en contribuant à la théorisation du territoire, par l’élargissement de sa portée, afin qu’il comprenne des connaissances et des pratiques écologiques axées sur le contrôle politique calculé des procédés de la terre, et en ciblant différentes relations systémiques entre la matière et la vie. L’administration de systèmes d’alimentation coloniale relie toute une gamme de problèmes économiques et écologiques, et, ce faisant, l’alimentation apporte une optique appropriée à travers laquelle il est possible d’étudier les interrelations historiques des techniques biopolitique et de géopolitique.
RESUMEN
Ecologizar regiones; garantizar alimentos: control de la escasez, la población y el territorio en África oriental y meridional británica. Territory, Politics, Governance. Este artículo trata sobre la administración de los sistemas de abastecimiento de alimentos en África oriental y meridional británica a mitad del siglo XX, y sobre la influencia de la ciencia ecológica en la última gubernamentalidad colonial. El objetivo de este estudio es contribuir a los debates actuales poniendo de relieve la necesidad de descubrir las particularidades políticas e históricas del territorio, así como ampliar el concepto de sus características legales, político-económicas y estratégicas, y la escala delimitada del Estado nacional. Se argumenta que un enfoque sobre las problematizaciones coloniales de gobierno, bajo el prisma de los alimentos, contribuye a estos debates al menos de dos maneras. Primero, al producir un conocimiento abundante de un contexto poco examinado en la literatura sobre el territorio. Segundo, al contribuir a la teorización de territorio ampliando su ámbito con la finalidad de incluir las prácticas y los conocimientos ecológicos orientados al control político calculativo de los procesos de la tierra y considerar las diferentes relaciones sistémicas entre la materia y la vida. El control de los sistemas alimentarios coloniales estaba vinculado a toda una serie de problemas económicos y ecológicos y, por tanto, los alimentos proporcionan una perspectiva adecuada con la que estudiar las interrelaciones históricas de las técnicas biopolíticas y geopolíticas.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Susan Parnell, Gordon Pirie, Sophie Oldfield, Gustav Visser and especially Clive Barnett for providing comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thank you to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Archival sources relating to the 1929–1930 Kenyan famine were consulted in The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), particularly the files CO 533/384/2 and CO 533/392/15.
2. TNA: CO 533/384/2, Barth to Amery, 9 March 1929.
3. TNA: CO 533/384/2, Holm to Barth, 13 February 1929.
4. Kenyan officials tended to favour relief works as an anti-famine measure, in line with the Indian experience, somewhat earlier and with more consistency than other settler colonies such as Southern Rhodesia (Iliffe, Citation1990). They, like their Indian counterparts, saw the development of communications infrastructure as distributional safeguards against famine (Davis, Citation2001). Yet India-style practices were never formalized in the form of ‘famine codes’ in Kenya as happened in Sudan and Southern Rhodesia (De Waal, Citation1997; Iliffe, Citation1990).
5. TNA: CO 533/384/2, Holm to Barth, 13 February 1929.
6. An extreme form of this view was seen in Kenyan Legislative Council debates surrounding the First World War-era legislation that sought to compel Africans to make productive use of allocated lands and, if necessary, to labour on relief works (East Africa Protectorate, Citation1918, 18 February, vol. 1, pp. 40–42).
7. On Kenyan agricultural policy in the late 1920s and 1930s, see the Agricultural Commission report (CPK, Citation1929b).
8. In Kenya, this included the 1931 Cooperative Societies Ordinance and 1935 Marketing of Native Produce Ordinance. The latter was based on similar legislation from Tanganyika and Uganda.
9. For a discussion of a similar rationale in Tanganyika, see Fourshey (Citation2008).
10. Other African governments had sought to increase food production by taking over marketing functions, setting minimum producer prices and paying special bonuses for the delivery of produce by certain dates. TNA: DO 35/848/6, Colonial Office circular, 29 September 1941.
11. For Kenyan correspondence with the Colonial Office on these emergency imports, see TNA: CO 852/428/4, CO 852/428/5 and CO 852/428/6.
12. TNA: CO 533/530/7, Norton to Chief Secretary of Kenya, 8 February 1944.
13. TNA: CO 852/500/14, minute by Carstairs, 11 December 1942.
14. TNA: CO 852/500/2, Grazebrook, ‘Confidential Report of the Controller of Prices and Military Contracts on Price Control in Kenya Colony’, n.d.
15. Previously, such precautions entailed planting a greater diversity of crops, including drought-resistant and quickly-maturing crops; improving communications to enable transport to all reserve areas and building up reserves in ‘local native council’ funds to pay for famine relief and infrastructure development. TNA: CO 533/517/6, Rennie to MacDonald, 15 February 1940.
16. Details on the subsequent debates and correspondence on agriculture and food statistics can be found in TNA: CO 533/530/7, CO 533/535/13 and CO 533/535/12.
17. Ittmann (Citation1999) notes that concerns about food supplies during and following the war provided an impetus to demographic work in the Colonial Office, including demographic planning, and particularly in the context of Africa.
18. TNA: CO 795/56/5, C. G. Trapnell, ‘Memorandum on the Utility of Aerial Photographic Survey for the Purposes of Ecological Survey’, n.d. On the debates surrounding the uses of aerial survey for colonial development, see Adey (Citation2010).
19. For example, early official documents used ‘Highlands’ and ‘Lowlands’ as categories to report on developmental progress in the territory (e.g., East Africa Protectorate, Citation1905–Citation06).
20. On territorial and functional integration in regional planning history, see Friedmann and Weaver (Citation1979).
21. For example, Trapnell corresponded with other scientific researchers such as Geoffrey Milne, soil chemist at the East African Agricultural Research Station in Amani (Tanganyika), and Clement Gillman, an engineer and geographer from Tanganyika. These letters reveal their shared enthusiasm for and notes on contemporary ecological research and debates. Some of this correspondence is available in Trapnell’s files at the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG): CGT/2/1 and CGT/3/3.
22. TNA: MAF 83/1827, Trapnell to Crawford, 23 September 1947.
23. Papers on the Swynnerton Plan, including interviews with Kenyan officials involved in the Plan, compiled as part of the Oxford Development Records Project can be found in The Bodleian Library at Oxford University (BLOU): MSS. Afr. s. 1717.