ABSTRACT

This article explores the development of small grains (sorghum, millet, and rapoko) production and marketing in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) over the colonial era from 1890 to the 1970s. Using primary archival and secondary sources, it examines how different factors, including the advent of white settler capitalist agriculture and shifting global food trends, shaped small grains production and marketing over varying economic, environmental, and political periods in the colony. During the early years following settler encroachment in 1890, African producers dominated grain production. Colonial agricultural capital, aiming to establish a monopoly in agriculture, passed various repressive laws to unseat African producers from this position of dominance, shaping the trajectory of small grains development into the future. Revisiting seminal historiography debates on the underdevelopment of the African peasantry, this article argues that small grains show the ways in which African farmers exercised agency in response to the vacillating attitudes towards African agriculture by different colonial authorities over time. This history of small grain offers an appreciation of the different survival strategies Africans used during the colonial period in Zimbabwe to achieve ‘small gains’.

摘要

本文探讨了 1890 年至 1970 年代殖民时代南罗得西亚（现津巴布韦）小谷物（高粱、小米和拉波科）生产和营销的发展。使用主要档案和二手资料，它研究了不同的因素，包括白人殖民资本主义农业的出现和不断变化的全球食品趋势，如何影响殖民地不同经济、环境和政治时期的小谷物生产和营销。在 1890 年定居者入侵后的最初几年里，非洲生产者主导了粮食生产。旨在建立农业垄断地位的殖民农业资本通过了各种压制性法律，将非洲生产者从这一主导地位上赶下台，塑造了未来小谷物发展的轨迹。本文回顾了关于非洲农民不发达的开创性史学辩论，认为小谷物展示了非洲农民如何行使代理权，以应对不同殖民当局随着时间的推移对非洲农业的摇摆不定的态度。这段小谷物的历史让人们了解了非洲人在津巴布韦殖民时期为实现“小额收益”而采用的不同生存策略。