Search

Finding that very little of Richard Grove's history of European environmental thought deals with continental Africa, historians of Africa may decide against immersing themselves in its complex global sweep and intricate detail. They can absorb Grove's crucial lessons, however, by turning to his final one hundred pages, where he surveys colonial environmental thought and policy in India during the first half of the nineteenth century, and presents his conclusions about environmentalism and empire. In these pages, Grove draws together the numerous threads of his earlier chapters, which discuss European thinking about environmental change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the islands of St Helena, Mauritius and the Caribbean. Having followed his discussion of island environmentalism by tracing the evolution of British environmental thought in India during the period of East India Company rule, Grove concludes by arguing that ‘modern environmentalism ... emerged as a direct response to the destructive social and ecological conditions of colonial rule’ (p. 486).

Social control of trypanosomiasis in African history deserves further study. The pioneering work in this field is John Ford's respected but neglectedThe Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology(1971). While Ford's arguments have received support from recent findings in immunological, epidemiological and epizootiological research, they have rarely met with evaluation or engagement, either in historical or scientific literature. Historians have tended to describe trypanosomiasis control as a matter of avoiding contact with tsetse fly. In so doing they have implicitly rejected the position of Ford, who regarded infrequent contacts between tsetse and mammalian hosts as necessary for the maintenance of host resistance. Ford believed that host resistance, rather than avoidance of tsetse, was the basis of trypanosomiasis control. The historical nature of Ford's work requires that a satisfactory evaluation ofThe Role of the Trypanosomiasesmake use of historical, as well as scientific, data. The evidence of trypanosomiasis and cattle-keeping from one region of north-eastern Tanzania supports Ford and suggests that other explanations of trypanosomiasis control are inadequate. The Tanzanian evidence shows that precolonial societies coexisted with, but could not avoid, tsetse. They could not eradicate tsetse because scarcity of water prevented permanent occupation of large areas. Tsetse and trypanosomiasis did not prevent cattle-keeping, but helped to keep the region's cattle population low and confined it to relatively densely settled neighbourhoods. Social control of trypanosomiasis collapsed during the pre-Second World War period of colonial rule. Economic and political developments were primarily responsible for a series of famines between 1894 and 1934. Famine-induced depopulation allowed steady spread of tsetse and wildlife reservoirs of trypanosomes into formerly cultivated areas which had been free of tsetse before the colonial period.

In this collection of ethnic group histories, written by authors from the Mara Region of Tanzania, local people tell their stories as a way to inspire development that builds on the strengths of the past. It combines histories from the small, but closely related, ethnic groups of Ikizu, Sizaki, Ikoma, Ngoreme, Nata, Ishenyi and Tatoga in South Mara, east of Lake Victoria and west of Serengeti National Park. Many of the authors compiled their stories by meeting with groups of elders. They were concerned to preserve history for the next generation who had not taken the time to learn the stories orally. The stories were written in Swahili and translated into English with annotations and an introduction so that readers not familiar with this region might also share in the experience. It also includes transcriptions of oral interviews with some of the same stories to get a sense of the ongoing conversions about the past. This collection makes local history told in a local idiom accessible to students of African history interested in social memory and the creation of ethnicity.

Part 1 Theoretical and macroscopic considerations: participation in defining Tanzanian realities, Norma Romm the rise and fall of Nyerere's populaism (ujamaa), Sam Maghimbi the conflict between the state and grassroots-based institutions in Tanzania's rural development, Sam Maghimbi structural adjustment and the performance of the agricultural sector in Tanzania, 1980-1990, A.K. Kashuliza and E.R. Mbiha social changes and the rural elderly in Tanzania, F.S.K. Tungaraza. Part 2 Land and environmental issues: land degradation in local communities on the southern slopes of Lake Kilimanjaro - towards a social science explanation and prospects for sustainable development, A.J. Lema towards a people-based approach - a case study of Mwanga District, A.A.K. Mvungi access to and ownership of land among women among the Pare Mountains of Northeastern Tanzania, C.K. Omari. Part 3 Indigenous technical knowledge: an overview of the dissemination and utilization of agricultural technical information in Tanzania, D.F. Rutatora and V. Rutachokozibwa towards sustainable rural development using the participatory approach - the case of Mgeta farmers, Morogoro Rural District, T. Lassalle and A.Z. Mattee the role of indigenous technical knowledge in increased food production in Tanzania, I.J. Lupanga et al conflicts between the systems of knowledge of the pastoralists and developmentalists - the case of Parakuyp Maasai in Bagamoyo District, Marja-Liisa Swantz. Part 4 Social control: from mythical stories to state-administered justice - some notes on the changing modes of social control among the Iraqw, Y.Q. Lawi the preponderance of women as victims in Sukuma witch killings, Simeon Mesaki partners and competitors in the fight against crime - the case of Sungusungu, Sufian B. Bukurura.

Liberalised development in Tanzania : studies on accumulation processes and local institutions

East Coast Fever, a form of the cattle disease known as theileriosis, has been a scourge of livestock-owning inhabitants of many African countries during the twentieth century. It constitutes "one of the major threats to the cattle industry in Tanzania and indeed a large expanse of eastern, central and southern Africa."l Analysis of theileriosis in these regions, nevertheless, has not nosed into the flow of historians' narratives.2 Their familiar litany of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century afflictions famine, rinderpest, trypanosomiasis, smallpox, cholera generally omits East Coast Fever. Its neglect in historical literature is all the more noteworthy considering that recent writing on East and South African history is distinguished by its concern with health, disease, and environmental issues.

From Marx's writing on the "Irish question," through Lenin's Imperialism, on to Meillassoux's recent work with labor migration, the impact of imperialist economic development upon class struggles within the metropolitan nations has occupied analysts of capitalist imperialism. But cultural imperialism and its relationship with metropolitan class struggles may deserve similar attention. The conceptions of African society imposed by European administrators and scholars upon colonial Africa may have played a vital role in obscuring African resistance to colonial domination and class development in Africa from even the most progressive elements of the metropolitan proletariat. The following account describes the image of African political attitudes and actions during World War II created by contemporary French propaganda and, subsequently, French historiography, and discusses the use of these images by the French Communist party in the postwar period.1