Smallholder cash crop adoption in colonial Africa:
Uganda’s ‘cotton revolution’ in a comparative perspective
Preliminary version. Please do not cite or circulate.
Prepared for the LSE Economic History Graduate Seminar
4 May 2016
Michiel Alexander de Haas
Wageningen University
[email protected]
1
Abstract
In an extensive body of recent literature, colonial attempts to generate a supply of raw cotton
from sub-Saharan Africa have been deemed misplaced and tragic. African conditions are
portrayed as unsuitable for large-scale cotton cultivation. As a result, the crop generated
widespread antipathy in the African countryside, while public-private ventures resulted in
failure and/or coercion. This paper argues that Africa’s historical experience with cotton is
more diverse. Taking a comparative approach, it highlights the diversity, rather than the
commonality of smallholder responses to cotton. It argues that cotton played a decisively
different role in forest and savannah areas. Instead of focusing on inherently antagonistic
relationship between states and smallholders, it highlights how returns to labour, risks and
coercion affected the degree to which smallholders were willing and able to adopt cotton. A
case study of Uganda illustrates that African smallholders responded to favourable conditions,
highlighting the role of states in processes of agricultural innovation, infrastructural
development and institutional change.
2
1: Introduction
1.1 Cotton in Africa: A common experience...
African smallholders adopted or expanded the cultivation of a wide range of export crops
during the colonial era. The cultivation of rain-fed cotton stands out for being relatively
unsuccessful, despite the fact that persistent attempts by Portuguese, French, German, Belgian
and British colonizers – often taking the shape of collaborations between colonial states and
textile lobbies – sprang up across the continent.1 A wide range of case studies has emphasizes
that the encounter between Africa’s rural populations and metropolitan cotton initiatives
unfolded far from smoothly. In recent scholarship on the issue, attempts have been made to
understand the history of cotton in a broader, African continental perspective.
Studies on cotton in Africa tend to focus on the self-interest of the metropolitan powers and
colonial administrations and the unwillingness of African smallholders to subject themselves
to their schemes. Isaacman and Roberts stress the antagonistic nature of the relationship
between African rural communities and colonial states, when they summarize African
responses to cotton programs:
“Peasants covertly defied those promoting cotton cultivation. By planting in poor soils, by
neglecting tasks at crucial points in the cotton cycle, by permitting unwanted hybridization, and
by refusing to sell their harvest to the export sector, peasants shaped the outcome of colonial
cotton development programs. To the extent that colonial authorities and European observers
were even aware of these acts, they generally dismissed them as just another indication of the
uneconomic behavior of lazy and incompetent African farmers.”
Similarly, on French Soudan, Roberts states that “The French could exhort, cajole, coerce,
and punish, but they could not control the decisions and intentions of Africans, who as
peasants or as labourers determined the success of colonial policy.”2 Bassett notes about
cotton policies during the pre-World War II period that “output levels were often correlated
with levels of coercion. When forced cultivation ebbed, cotton output declined.”3
This focus on the antagonistic state-society relationship is reflective of scholarship on
European colonialism in Africa in general, and cotton in particular. Considering the fact that
cotton exports from Africa resulted primarily from the particularly keen interests that
European colonial powers and commercial interests had in establishing cotton exports from
their African dependencies. Not only did cotton exports from the American South deplete
European foreign currency reserves, the “cotton famine” during the civil war of the 1860s had
made Europeans aware of the fragility of American raw cotton supplies, a liability which
could undermine the operation of their crucial domestic textile industries. By the end of the
19th century, India had been turned into a major cotton exporter for the mills of Lancashire,
while Russia managed to dramatically increase supplies from its Central Asian dependencies.
Africa was the next frontier, especially since recurrent boll weevil infestations in the
1
Beckert Empire of Cotton, p. 340-78
Roberts Two worlds of cotton, p. XX
3
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 7
2
3
American south fuelled fears of renewed shortages. New organizations, such as the British
Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) and the Association Cotonniere Coloniale (ACC) were
established to promote cotton in Africa through public-private ventures. African rural
development, or the wellbeing of African smallholders were a secondary priority – if an
explicit aim at all.
The antagonistic relationship between African smallholders and colonial states is said to have
resulted in a bifurcated impact of cotton in colonial Africa. In some cases, peasants resisted
the introduction of cotton, subverting and quickly pre-empting unrealistic metropolitan
dreams. In others, colonial powers were more insistent, and resorted to repression and forced
labour to stamp out resistance and achieve their objectives. Northern Nigeria illustrates the
scenario of failed metropolitan dreams. British administrators and industry representatives
saw a new “Mecca of Lancashire”, and estimated that Nigeria alone could almost satisfy the
industry’s wants. A railway was built to Kano, some 500 miles from the coast. Despite its size
and perceived potential, colonial Nigeria never produced more than a tiny fraction of Britain’s
cotton imports. Instead, smallholders preferred to offer groundnuts for export, and supply
their cotton crop to the local textile industry instead, which offered higher prices than the
export market.4 The disappointing and impotent experience of British cotton interests in
Nigeria was parallel to those of the French and Germans in their West African territories.5
Mozambique exemplifies the scenario of colonial coercion. Portuguese hopes for cotton selfsufficiency focused on Mozambique. As in other places, settlers and plantation owners failed
to make cotton a profitable crop, so cultivation was relegated to concession companies which
were given considerable freedom to work with local smallholders to generate an export of
cotton. At first, Mozambican smallholders showed little enthusiasm for cotton cultivation, and
only when the crop was forcefully imposed in the late 1930s, did Portugal manage to obtain
the majority of its cotton imports from their colonial empire.6 The Belgian Congo falls in the
same category.7
4
Candotti (2015) Cotton growing and textile production in northern Nigeria: from caliphate to protectorate, c.
1804-1914, Helleiner (1966) Peasant agriculture, government, and economic growth in Nigeria, Hinds (1996)
“Colonial policy and Nigerian cotton exports, 1939-1951”The International Journal of African Historical
Studies (29): pp. 25-46, Hogendorn (1995) “The cotton campaign in Northern Nigeria, 1902-1914: An early
example of public/private planning failure in agriculture” in Isaacman and Roberts (eds) Cotton, colonialism and
social history in sub-Saharan Africa, Nonnenmacher and Onyeiwu (2005) ‘Illusion of a Cotton Paradise:
Explaining the Failure of the British Cotton Growing Association in Colonial Nigeria’, Journal of European
Economic History 34:1, Penzer (1920). Cotton in British West Africa including Togoland and the Cameroons. A
fascinating still movie can be found here: http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1322
5
On the French Sudan see Roberts Two worlds of cotton colonialism, on Cote d’Ivoire see Bassett Peasant
cotton revolution, on Togo see Beckert (2005). From Tuskegee to Togo: The Problem of Freedom in the Empire
of Cotton. The Journal of American History, 92(2), 498-526 and Zimmerman (2005). A German Alabama in
Africa: The Tuskegee Expedition to German Togo and the Transnational Origins of West African Cotton
Growers. The American Historical Review, 110(5), 1362-1398.
6
Isaacman (1980). "Cotton is the mother of poverty": peasant resistance to forced cotton production in
Mozambique, 1938-1961, Isaacman (1985). Chiefs, Rural Differentiation and Peasant Protest: The Mozambican
Forced Cotton Regime 1938-1961. African Economic History(14), 15-56, Isaacman (1992). Peasants, Work and
the Labor Process: Forced Cotton Cultivation in Colonial Mozambique 1938-1961. Journal of Social History,
25(4), 815-855.
7
Brixhe, (1953). Le Coton au Congo belge. Bruxelles, Jewsiewicki (1977). The Great Depression and the
Making of the Colonial Economic System in the Belgian Congo. African Economic History (4), 153-176, Likaka
(1997). Rural society and cotton in colonial Zaire
4
In the introduction to an authoritative and widely cited edited volume on cotton in colonial
Africa, Isaacman and Roberts summarize with two conclusions about the initial adoption of
cotton in colonial Africa:
“[First,] the imposition of colonial cotton regimes generated widespread antipathy throughout
the countryside. Neither peasants, tenants, nor plantation workers were anxious to cultivate the
crop. [Second,] cotton and coercion almost invariably went hand in hand. Cotton was not only
the premier colonial crop, it was the premier forced crop.”8
Because African smallholders eagerly took the initiative to adopt a range of other export crops
including groundnuts, palm oil, cocoa and coffee, their perceived antipathy towards cotton
requires a (set of) crop-specific explanation(s). Most such explanations in the literature focus
on the fact that cotton is an inedible, labour-intensive crop which fetched low prices on a
highly competitive world market:
“Given the facts that upland cotton was labor-intensive, that it competed with food production,
that it was inedible, and that it was a high-risk crop, it is hardly surprising that rural
communities did not leap at the opportunity to grow it. In most cases neither the pressure of
colonial taxes nor increased desire for European commodities proved sufficient incentives. [...]
Other cash crops were more lucrative, including groundnuts, cocoa and palm oil. [...] All these
crops offered two advantages over cotton: they were less labor-intensive and they yielded higher
income.”9
Some argue that cotton was practically doomed from the start, as sub-Saharan African
conditions were unsuitable for its cultivation, because of erratic rainfall patterns, the poverty
of African soils and higher potential yields in mid-latitude areas (such as the major cotton
producing regions in the U.S. South and Central Asia). Colonial initiatives to expand cotton,
therefore, we not only a disaster, but an inevitable disaster – a tragedy. Porter, for example
argues that
“[n]ever was so much misplaced effort devoted to an enterprise as the production as of cotton in
sub-Saharan colonial Africa. The photosynthetic difference and cotton’s wide production in
large, better-suited areas doomed from the start the metropolitan dream of developing a
competitive cotton industry in tropical Africa, as against the major mid-latitude producers.
There were always alternative high quality supplies, available at low costs.”10
1.2 ...or a diverse one?
This generalized idea of failed or coerced cotton cultivation in colonial Africa has strongly
influenced recent social and economic historical literature, as well as development literature
8
Isaacman & Roberts in Isaacman & Roberts Cotton, p. 29. Bassett summarizes the literature on the pre-World
War II history of cotton in a similar fashion: “output levels were often correlated with levels of coercion. When
forced cultivation ebbed, cotton output declined.” Bassett Peasant cotton revolution
9
Isaacman & Roberts in Isaacman & Roberts, p. 23
10
Porter quoted in Isaacman & Roberts Cotton, p. 47
5
on the topic.11 There is much merit in the attempt to move beyond individual cases studies,
search for commonalities and analyse patterns. However, as I will argue in this paper, the
existing framework has a rather deterministic and rigid character, which hampers a better
understanding of processes of smallholder behaviour, agricultural innovation and policy in an
African context – issues that are not only of historical interests, but have serious implications
for present and future development agendas as well.
The recourse to environmental determinism to explain Africa’s contentious encounter with
cotton is problematic from a theoretical perspective, since – as basic Ricardian theory teaches
us – an absolute disadvantage does not necessarily imply a comparative disadvantage.
However, my primary concern is that the empirical record tells a more complex story as well.
Firstly, when we put Africa in a global perspective, we find that India – at a similar latitude
and with equally short growing seasons – transformed into a major cotton-exporting region
during the late 19th century.12 Secondly, and more importantly, even Africa’s own experience
is much more diverse than the literature permits Even though colonial initiatives often failed,
there are also cases of unexpected ‘cotton revolutions’, and these cases, as I will argue, should
not be downplayed or framed as ‘exceptions that prove the rule’(compilation of production
figures in Appendix 4 & 5). In some cases smallholders actually adopted cotton on a wide
scale, and continued cultivating into the post-colonial era.
Most notably, Ugandan smallholders adopted cotton almost universally in the first three
decades of the twentieth century. Uganda soon developed into sub-Saharan Africa’s largest
exporter of cotton, both in absolute and per-capita terms.13 In per capita terms, Uganda was in
the top-ten cotton producers worldwide both in the 1920s and in the 1960s, despite its
complete absence from world trade before 1900.14 Despite its importance, the case of Uganda
is conspicuously absent from the Isaacman and Roberts’ collection of case studies, and only
mentioned in passing in the introductory chapter.15 In some instances, Uganda is lumped with
other examples of forced cultivation, and in others put up as an ‘exceptions that prove the
rule’, arguing that very specific agro-ecological ‘niche’ conditions explain account for the
deviating attitude of African smallholders to cultivating cotton for export. This argument has
an antecedent. In a widely cited article, John Tosh (1980) has argued that the cultivation of
the high-yielding perennial green banana left Ugandan smallholders with enough time to
adopt cotton without compromising on food security.16 Another study by the same author,
which narrates the hesitation of millet growing smallholders in the savannah of northern
Uganda to adopt cotton, is usually taken as the same argument’s ‘flipside’.17
11
Beckert Empire of Cotton, Isaacman & Roberts Cotton, Robins ‘Black man’s crop’, Bassett Peasant cotton
revolution, Likaka Rural society and cotton, Austin ‘Resources, techniques’, Austin ‘Explaining and evaluating’,
Moseley & Gray Hanging by a thread: cotton, globalization, and poverty in Africa.
12
Beckert Empire of Cotton, p. 340-78
13
From the 1910s to the 1930s, Uganda’s smallholders exported 26% more cotton than the second biggest
exporter in Africa (Sudan), were cotton was grown in the irrigated Gezira scheme.
14
Data for the 1920s is based on J.P. Goode (ed) Goode’s School Atlas (Chicago, 1933), as cited in Porter in
Isaacman & Roberts Cotton, p. 48. Data for the 1960s from FAO STAT.
15
Isaacman & Roberts Cotton
16
See Tosh 1980
17
Tosh 1978. See Austin 2008
6
A quick glance at FAO’s crop suitability map for cotton (see Appendix 2) should immediately
call into question the idea that there was something special about Uganda’s agro-ecology that
made it exceptionally suitable for the cultivation of cotton. In fact, Uganda seems to rank
among the least suitable countries for the cultivation of cotton! A closer look at farming
systems in Uganda further problematizes the idea that Uganda was an ‘exception that proved
the rule. The green banana argument does not work in the northern and eastern savannah areas
of the country, which quickly adopted cotton as well, and eventually emerged as the
territory’s dominant cotton producing area. Moreover, Ugandan smallholders were not unique
in cultivating high yielding food crops (which supposedly were responsible for the quick and
voluntary adoption of cotton). Bananas and root crops such as yam, taro and cassava were
cultivated among smallholders in large parts of Central and West Africa in which cotton was
attempted but failed.18 In the case of the banana zone in Uganda, therefore, the question
should not only be why smallholders adopted cotton, but also why they did not, initially,
adopt a more productive tree crop such as cocoa or coffee. As I will argue now, a wide range
of factors, including a set of particular colonial interventions, contribute to an explanation for
the large scale adoption of cotton cultivation for export among smallholders in colonial
Uganda.
Particularly interesting is that Uganda was about the least likely place for a ‘cotton revolution
to take place. Ugandan smallholders had barely any experience with cultivating the crop.19
Although imported textiles became popular in Uganda as a currency and sign of wealth during
the nineteenth century, indigenous cloth was made from the bark of specific Acacia trees as
well as from animal hides, hence there was virtually no demand for indigenously cultivated
raw cotton.20 Commercial cotton cultivation was introduced in landlocked Uganda just after
the turn of the century, more or less immediately after the “Uganda railway” reached the
shores of Lake Victoria, as well as the introduction of steamers on the lake itself, making the
production of export commodities a lucrative proposition.21 Interestingly, K. Borup, the
chairman of the Uganda Company, the commercial branch of the Church Missionary Society
in Uganda is usually credited with the introduction of new commercial cotton varieties into
Uganda.22
When we allow the post-colonial era to enter the framework, the story becomes even more
complicated, as we find impressive cases of cotton smallholder revolutions from the 1960s
onwards, most notably in Francophone West Africa.23 The basic facts speak for themselves.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, five countries together recorded a staggering annual compound
18
An interesting case among the Krobo of Ghana is described by Dummett 1977
Although ‘wild’ cotton was grown at least in middle of the 19 th century, as commented upon by Samuel Baker
in 1872, Emin Pasha in 1880 and Lugard in 1893. See Nayenga 1981, Nye and Hosking ‘history and
development’, in Tothil 1940, p. 183
20
Except for small subsidiary practices, such as the cultivation of local cotton for knitted decoration among the
Acholi of northern Uganda.” (Jorgensen 1981: ff. p. 129)
21
Hattersley estimated the that the introduction of steam-powered transportation brought down the freight costs
from England to Kampala from 3 shillings a pound (15%) to fourpence a pound (1,67%). Quoted in Ehrlich,
Marketing of Cotton, p. 25
22
Ehrlich 1953; 1956
23
Lele & Van de Walle (1989) Cotton in Africa: an analysis of differences in performance MADIA – World
Bank Discussion Paper
19
7
cotton production growth rate of 11.5 per cent (compared to 1.6 per cent worldwide), while
significantly expanding their share in world market production from a negligible 0.2 per cent
to a more substantial 2.8 per cent (see Figure 1 below).24 This story is already remarkable and
important in itself for the fact that it problematizes – or at the last nuances – the commonly
held view that post-colonial Africa experienced a ‘postimperial collapse’ followed by “about
a half-century” of “lost decades”, characterized by “political instability, violent conflict and
economic stagnation.”25
Figure 1. Share of world market production and production growth in the five
francophone countries that experienced a post-colonial ‘peasant cotton revolutions’
Share of world market production Annual compound growth
rate 1963-1997 (5-yr.av.)
1960s
1990s
Benin
0.0%
0.6%
13.7%
Burkina Faso
0.0%
0.5%
11.8%
Côte d'Ivoire
0.1%
0.6%
11.4%
Mali
0.1%
0.8%
11.1%
Togo
0.0%
0.3%
9.5%
Total
0.2%
2.8%
11.5%
Africa
8.9%
7.9%
1.5%
World
100%
100%
1.6%
Notes: I used the first (1961-65) and last (1995-1999) five-year-average to calculate
annual compound growth rates (i.e. over a 34 year period from 1963 to 1997).
Source: FAO STAT Online
Bassett, who also studied the success story of Côte d’Ivoire in much detail, exposes how
farmers, from the 1950s onwards, realized impressive (labour) productivity growth through
the adoption of new, high yielding food crops (maize) and cotton varieties, pesticides and
ploughs. This is where the West African case differs substantially from the Ugandan case; the
growth in cotton production involved a process of agricultural intensification:26
The indicators for the years 1965-84 furnish ample evidence for what I call a “cotton
revolution.” Cotton yields increased at an average rate of 4% per year over these two decades.
Cotton area grew at an even faster rate of 17% per year. The latter was due to a threefold
increase in the number of growers and secondly to an expansion in cultivated area per planter.
The latter nearly doubled, rising from 0.77 ha to 1.40 ha per grower. Yields increases accounted
for 15% of the increased output over this twenty-year period.27
24
Especially considering the wide range of agro-ecologies in which cotton is grown, ranging from China to
Egypt, and India to The United States. The sector is also highly competitive, primarily due to the technologically
highly advanced (and heavily subsidized) American cotton sector.
25
Bates, R. H., Coatsworth, J. H., & Williamson, J. G. (2007). “Lost Decades: Postindependence Performance in
Latin America and Africa.” The Journal of Economic History, 67(04), 917-943
26
This particular case calls into question the idea that the green revolution ‘bypassed’ Africa. Cf. Frankema
“Africa and the Green Revolution”
27
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 9-10
8
The story becomes all the more interesting and remarkable when we consider the fact that, for
at least half a century, French colonial authorities, for over half a century, had tried – with
consistent lack of success – to inspire or even coerce African smallholders in the West
African savanna to grow cotton. J. Lebeuf, the former director of the Ferkessedugu cotton
farm and current head of the Agricultural Service declared in 1941 that
‘just because cotton was found to grow everywhere, one concluded that it could become an
important agricultural product of these regions. A hypothesis even more seductive since this
textile is one of the primary materials for which the Metropole depended almost exclusively on
foreign sources and for which it paid a heavy tribute. The reality appears, alas, something
entirely different.’”28
In the words of Bassett,
“Repeated attempts by colonial administrators to intensify cotton cultivation were never realized
in a sustained and satisfactory manner. France’s African colonies furnished just one to three
percent of metropolitan cotton fiber needs over nearly three and a half decades. Depending on
the period, officials cited a number of factors to explain the disappointing results: low-yielding
varieties, cotton pests, low prices, food crop competition, and peasant resistance to forced
cultivation.”29
How does such a striking reversal concur with static environmental or factor endowment
perspectives?
2. Cotton adoption: a new framework
2.1. Cotton in savannah zones versus forest and woodland zones
To move beyond a temporally and environmentally deterministic view on the interplay
between agro-ecology and labour, and to better understand the economic history of cotton in
Africa, I propose, first, to start with a distinction between two quite distinct agro-ecological
zones in sub-Saharan Africa: (1) humid forest and woodland zones and (2) semi-arid savanna
zones.30 Although the distinction rather represents two extremes on a continuum, the
dichotomy provides a useful framework to understand the attractiveness of cotton cultivation
to African smallholders. The most important defining characteristic here, is whether African
smallholders could potentially cultivate lucrative tree crops.
Humid forest and woodland zones are characterized by long rainy seasons, which enabled
smallholders to cultivate roots, tubers and bananas throughout most of the year, which freed
up labour to cultivate lucrative perennial crops like cocoa, palm oil and coffee. African
smallholders in these areas usually did not receive cotton with much enthusiasm because tree
crops provided a much higher returns to labour (see appendix 2 & 3 for cotton and tree crop
28
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 81
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 51
30
Following a distinction that has previously made in Tosh ‘cash crop revolution’, Austin ‘Resources,
techniques’ and Austin ‘Explaining and evaluating’
29
9
suitability).31 It is thus all the more interesting that smallholders in southern Uganda’s fertile
woodland areas did adopt cotton, while attempts to introduce the crop in similar agroecological conditions in Northern Congo involved considerable level of coercion, and in
southern Ghana completely failed.
The situation in Africa’s semi-arid savanna zones was quite different. Here, farmers had to
cultivate their food crops during a much shorter rainy seasons and relied on drought resistant
but more labour intensive food crops such millet, sorghum and groundnuts. In these
conditions, farmers faced serious labour bottleneck challenges which made it difficult for
them to adopt a non-edible, labour intensive cash crop without compromising on their food
security.32 Moreover, lucrative tree crops such as coffee and cocoa suffer from episodes of
severe drought and do not thrive in savannah conditions. Alternative sources of income were
limited. In the absence of a strong marketing infrastructure, local demand for food crops on a
commercial scale tended to be minor and intermittent and hence could hardly provide a
reliable cash flow. Local industrial employment was (and still is) all but absent, and labour
migration was often the only reasonable alternative to substantially augment household
income beyond subsistence production. The difference between forest zones and savanna
zones is reflected in highly uneven investment patterns and large and persistent income
gaps.33
In many African savannah areas, cotton had been cultivated to feed into local textile industries
for centuries, as alluded to by Lebeuf in the citation above (sizeable pre-colonial textile
industries have been commented upon for, amongst others, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria,
Togo, Zimbabwe and Malawi34). Arguments about the failure of cotton in the West African
savanna tend to stress the fact that a thriving and persistent indigenous cotton textile sector
which during the colonial period, to the chagrin of colonial administrators, diverted cotton
away from production for export. These arguments may raise the impression that the issue
was not so much that smallholders were struggling with labour bottlenecks and food
insecurity, but that they were just unwilling to offer their sizeable raw cotton harvest to
colonial traders. While acknowledging the presence of a flourishing and resilient indigenous
textile sectors – in the case of Cote d’Ivoire, for example, all the way up to the post-WWII
period35 – I argue that the argument should not be about the colonial administrations’ failure
to buy cotton from resistant smallholders and divert raw cotton away from the indigenous
31
See for example Dummett (1975). Obstacles to government-assisted agricultural development in West Africa:
cotton-growing experimentation in Ghana in the early 20th century. Agricultural History Review, 23.
32
See Austin ‘Resources, techniques’ and Austin ‘Explaining and evaluating’. Beckert Empire of Cotton also
emphasizes on the negative impact of cotton on food security, see p. 333-34 and p. 362
33
Such as between the savannah and forest-/woodland areas of Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda, which in all
these cases happens to be a north-south divide.
34
Mandala (1990). Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in
Malawi,1859-1960, Nyambara (2000). Colonial Policy and Peasant Cotton Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia,
1904-1953. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 33(1), 81-111, Roberts Two worlds of cotton
colonialism, Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, Zimmerman (2005). A German Alabama in Africa, Candotti
(2015) Cotton growing and textile production in northern Nigeria
35
“In the 1946 annual report of the Agricultural Service, the description of cotton marketing in the Korhogo
region showed the indigenous handicraft industry dominating the cotton sector.” Bassett Peasant cotton
revolution, p. 84
10
sector, but, first and above all, about its failure to enable smallholders to expand total
production in precarious savannah conditions.
Bassett points out that “throughout much of the 1920s and 30s, the parallel cotton market
thrived in Cote d’Ivoire as it did elsewhere in French West Africa.” But does the existence of
a thriving indigenous textile sector imply that individual households typically assigned an
important share of their resources to the cultivation of raw cotton? Before attempts were made
to divert cotton to export markets, African smallholders mostly cultivated perennial varieties
of cotton, which they intercropped with food crops such as sorghum, millet, maize, yams,
peanuts and rice in fields cultivated by individual households or large communities. Bassett
states that “cotton was a secondary crop that did not require much labour time. In yam fields,
for example, peasants planted cotton in every fourth mound. Perennial varieties were cut back
each year and produced fibre for up to ten years. Cotton yields averaged only 40 kilograms
per intercropped hectare.”36 Cotton varieties were selected on the basis of their resilience to
local soil and climatological conditions and the disease environment, and much less on the
basis of uniformity of colour and staple length or gin yield37 – qualities that were of great
importance to sell West African cotton in the world cotton market.
On the basis of official ginning figures, Bassett calculates that “an estimated 37% of total
cotton output was marketed locally.”38 Even when we include this production for local
markets, production was insignificant compared to Uganda. From 1924 to 1938, years for
which comparable figures are available, per capita production of cotton for local and export
markets in Cote d’Ivoire was only 4 per cent of Uganda’s production. From 1948 to 1959,
Cote d’Ivoire’s per capita raw cotton production stood even lower, at 2 per cent of
Uganda’s.39 Even if the official ginnery figures provide a gross underestimate (which is
unlikely, because most cotton by this time was ginned mechanically due to the extremely
labour intensive nature of manual ginning40), the difference with per capita production in
Uganda is very large.
That the scale of cultivation was very limited also becomes clear from the actual targets of the
French colonial administration when it was trying to push smallholders to increase their
commitment to cotton cultivation. In 1916 in Cote d’Ivoire, for example, the required acreage
of cotton per taxpayer was raised from 0.08 hectare to 0.1 hectare. 41 In 1925 this amount was
doubled, presumably to 0.2 hectare.42 In comparison with acreages in Teso (Uganda) these
were very modest goals. In 1921, taxpayers in Teso cultivated on average 0.4 hectares of
36
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 57 This was only one-fifth of the yield of 220 kilograms per hectare that
were typically found in Uganda’s savannah areas it the colonial era. Cf. De Haas Measuring rural welfare.
37
The weight of cotton lint in relation to cotton seed.
38
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 66
39
Uganda production figure based on official lint export statistics from the Annual Blue Books and
Administration Reports (conservatively assuming that all locally produced cotton was exported). Cote d’Ivoire
production figures based on cotton seed production in Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 186 (Appendix 1),
assuming (a high = conservative) a gin yield of 33 per cent.
40
Hand ginning (without hand carders) is a very time consuming job. A woman can gin maybe 250 grams of lint
per day, while a European machine can gin 800-1000 KG of raw cotton per day. Roberts in Isaacman & Roberts,
p. 237
41
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 59
42
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 66
11
cotton. By 1936 this had increased to a full hectare per taxpayer.43 Differences in direct taxes
are also illustrative. In 1925, the head tax in northern Cote d’Ivoire were raised to 7.50 Franc,
the equivalent of less than 1.5 Shilling, following the official exchange rate.44 In that same
year, the poll tax in Teso was 15 shilling, more than ten times higher – which reflects, at least
in part, an equally large gap in cash income and purchasing power.
In some areas, most notably northern Nigeria and Senegal, attempts to introduce cotton failed,
while groundnuts (which also grow well in dryer savannah climates) were cultivated for
export on a considerable scale.45 This success of groundnuts has been taken as evidence of the
supposed inherent unattractiveness of cotton, citing higher labour demands, the fact that
cotton is non-edible and provides lower returns to labour of the latter as contributory factors.46
Interestingly, however, there are also cases (such as northern Uganda and the Shire Valley in
Malawi) where smallholders switched from oil seeds (groundnuts and sesame seed) to
cotton.47 Apparently, smallholders in these areas, for some reason, preferred cotton over
oilseeds, and were able to overcome some of the typical ‘savannah’ labour and food security
constraints.
I propose, rather than to dismiss cotton adoption in savannah areas as a (failed) colonial
enterprise, to conceptualize the introduction of cotton as potentially augmenting rural welfare,
but only if constraints facing smallholders, most notably food insecurity and labour
bottlenecks have been overcome.
2.2. Smallholders and the adoption of cotton: returns to labour, risk and coercion
The core argument of this paper is that if we want to understand factors determining the
(non)adoption of cotton in sub-Saharan Africa, we have to look at the diversity rather than the
commonality, provide a framework that can explain both success and failure and reinterpret
and reappraise the role of states and private interests, as potentially appropriate agents to
introduce technologies, infrastructures and institutions which may be necessary to overcome
smallholder bottlenecks and constraints.48
43
Vail Agricultural innovation, p. 146, under the reasonable assumption that every 1 in 5 persons was a
taxpayer. cf. De Haas Measuring rural welfare
44
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 66. For the conversion I first convert both Franc and Pound to Dollar.
Lawrence H. Officer, "Exchange Rates Between the United States Dollar and Forty-one Currencies,",
MeasuringWorth, 2016
45
The problem of food crop trade in a context of thin markets is that, due to annual fluctuations in growing
conditions, all farmers tend to have either a surplus or a deficit at the same time. Long-distance trade would be a
possibility, but that requires a large market for food crops as well as ways to properly store and transport food
crops. These conditions were commonly not met during the colonial era in Africa, and are still largely absent in
many places. For a theoretical explanation see De Janvry, Fafchamps & Sadoulet, “Peasant household behavior
with missing markets: Some paradoxes explained.”
46
See section 1.1.
47
Tosh (1978) Lango Agriculture, and ongoing research by Katharine Frederick on the Shire Valley in Malawi
48
As such, I follow up a call of Austin to pay closer attention to the role of technology and institutions in
explanations of African rural development. See Austin ‘Resources, techniques’ and Austin ‘Explaining and
evaluating’.
12
I discuss three determinants of a smallholder’s decision to adopt or not adopt cotton 1) returns
to labour, 2) risks, and 3) coercion. The most basic determinant of a smallholder’s decision to
adopt cotton is the return to labour. This requires an assessment of the hours of labour that
have to be invested (including obtaining inputs, preparing fields, planting, weeding,
harvesting, sorting and marketing the crop) in relation to the expected yield and the expected
price the farmer will receive for the harvested crop. The assessment is complicated by
opportunity costs, such as the cultivation of an alternative (food or cash) crop, off-farm
activities (such as wage labour) or even leisure. We also have to factor in the fact that female
and children’s labour as well as hired labour may be employed, and that opportunity costs are
subject to seasonal fluctuation. Moreover, we cannot assume the value of money itself to be
constant in the conditions under review, since only a limited (but increasing) number of
marketable goods were available for purchase with monetary income. What is relevant here is
that these factors may be augmented through external interventions. The construction of roads
and cotton ginning facilities or the introduction of new means of (motorized) transport may
significantly reduces the time required to market a crop. The introduction of a new cotton
variety can result in higher yields and thus higher returns to labour. The introduction of new
marketed products (such as imported textiles, tobacco, liquor, bicycles and corrugated iron
roofs) may increase the value of monetary income itself.
Besides an assessment of returns to labour, smallholders also factor in risks that influence
decisions to adopt a crop. Some crops may provide higher returns to labour, but only start
yielding after a few years (such as cocoa or coffee). Also, food crops may not always be
available in local markets. The risk of starvation in a bad year may lead smallholders to
prioritize subsistence over maximizing income. Some crops can be grown both for subsistence
and for sale (such as oilseeds), reducing the risk of food insecurity, which may lead
smallholders to prefer them even if they provide lower returns to labour. Risks can also be
augmented by external interventions. The presence of food aid initiatives may reduce the
danger of famine, which may lead smallholders to switch to a riskier but more remunerative
crop. The availability of credit facilities may secure a smoother cash flow and allow
smallholders to have a longer investment horizon.
Thirdly, smallholders’ decisions may be influenced by coercion, i.e. involuntary demands on
their labour, output or income. For example, forced recruitment in infrastructure (common in
the early colonial era) may restrict the ability of smallholders to adopt cash crops or even
cultivate for subsistence. Forced cultivation, instead, may lead them to adopt a crop that
would otherwise not be remunerative. The imposition of a monetary tax may force
smallholders to generate cash income that would otherwise not be worthwhile. I would posit
that, even though coercion can be effective in the short run, it will not lead to sustained
behaviour changes among rural communities.49 If coercion is used as a strategy to to solve
‘catch 22-type’ coordination problems (it only becomes worthwhile to build a cotton ginnery
if enough smallholders cultivate cotton, smallholder will only cultivate cotton if they can
market it to a local cotton ginning facility – forcing smallholders to grow cotton may justify
the investment in the facility) it may be effective.
49
In line with perspectives discussed in section 1.1.
13
2.3. Colonial interventions: a failed ‘development imperative’?
As I will show, under some conditions only a few external interventions into the rural
economy were already sufficient to trigger a ‘peasant cotton revolution’. In other cases, more
sustained state interventions were required to make cotton a success, interventions that states
often were not willing and able to commit themselves to. Allowing for the possibility that the
exogenously motivated introduction of cotton may have led African smallholders to adopt
cotton because it came in their interest to grow it, also opens up the idea that, instead of
‘keeping their hands off’, states should actually come to smallholders help by facilitating
transportation and marketing, provide research and extension to improve yields and quality
and contribute to overcoming labour bottlenecks, aiming to make cotton a feasible and
ultimately lucrative proposition for smallholders, and thereby increasing vulnerable
communities’ livelihood options. The failure of colonial states may have been their inability
and unwillingness to achieve this.
This ‘revisionist’ perspective on cotton cultivation and the role of public-private interventions
has a number of interesting consequences. Firstly, it opens up the possibility that colonial
states could (and in some cases did?) contribute to development in Africa’s vulnerable rural
communities. Although controversial to most social historians, economic historians have
already stressed the at least partially ‘benign’ consequences (which is different from
intentions) of certain aspects of colonial rule, such as health care,50 transportation51 and
education.52 Moreover, we could draw inspiration from other strands of literature stress the
important or even indispensable role states can play in rural development. For example, it is
widely held that in European, American and Japanese agriculture from the late 19 th century
onwards, states played a vital role in land reform, agricultural research, extension and
education, credit, co-operatives, the distribution of inputs (fertilizers, seeds and machinery),
irrigation, infrastructure, price stabilization, storage, marketing, product quality management
and processing. Some scholars explicitly discuss the implication of these cases for present day
developing countries.53 The idea that (sometimes forceful) public interventions are a vital
component of rural development (and economic growth more generally), is also the central
tenet in the developmental state literature. In this literature, it is even argued that a certain
degree of dirigisme and even compulsion contributes to positive medium- and long-run
development outcomes. Oft cited African cases are present-day Rwanda and Ethiopia, both of
which experienced impressive agricultural productivity growth and rural development under
rather oppressive regimes. Finally, this perspective feeds into a highly contested in the current
development literature about the merits of “big push” initiatives in development.54
50
Moradi, A. (2009). Towards an objective account of nutrition and health in colonial Kenya: a study of stature
in African army recruits and civilians, 1880-1980. Journal of Economic History, 69, 720-755.
51
Jedwab, R., Kerby, E., & Moradi, A. (2015). History, Path Dependence and Development: Evidence from
Colonial Railroads, Settlers and Cities in Kenya. The Economic Journal
52
Frankema, E. H. P. (2012). The origins of formal education in sub-Saharan Africa: was British rule more
benign? European Review of Economic History, 16(4), 335-355.
53
Chang, H.-J. (2009). Rethinking public policy in agriculture: lessons from history, distant and recent. The
Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(3), 477-515
54
See for example the millenium villages initiative, http://millenniumvillages.org/
14
Applying a similar lens to Africa’s vulnerable savanna regions may help us to understand the
role of states in capacity building, solving coordination failures, breaking through low-level
equilibria and generate a range of other insights that might be useful for development policy.
Looking at the history of cotton in Africa from this perspective also allows us to re-evaluate
the causes of (colonial) state failure. Rather than viewing colonial state interventions as
inherently excessive and misplaced and colonial objectives as inherently antagonistic to
African interests and unfit to prevailing geographical conditions, it allows us to locate the
failure of the colonial state instead as a result of insufficient and ill-informed intervention.
Moving away from an antagonistic perspective also enables us move beyond framing African
smallholders as either ‘victims’ of oppression, or ‘resisters’ of state intrusion. Reintroducing
an important role of the state does not automatically imply that we have to reduce
smallholders to ‘passive recipients’ of ‘outside stimuli’. Instead, we can now conceptualize
them as pragmatic and dynamic actors who are seeking better lives and economic possibilities
and are willing and able to respond – under some conditions – to the introduction of new
possibilities, including the cultivation of cotton. Slightly more controversial, this perspective
allows us to discuss the possibility that a certain level of coercion and compulsion was
beneficial, or even necessary to push risk-averse smallholders away from a low-level ‘poverty
trap’ equilibrium towards livelihoods that, in the medium and long-run may have proven
beneficial for them as well.
3: The cash crop revolution(s) in colonial Uganda
3.1. Uganda’s southern banana zone
Cotton was first adopted by the banana growing Baganda on the northern shores of Lake
Victoria (see appendix 6 for a map of Uganda with relevant indicators). The Buganda
Kingdom was the centre of gravity of British presence and investment in the newly acquired
Uganda Protectorate. Buganda’s land-owning chiefs were the early initiators and beneficiaries
of cotton cultivation, but production gradually shifted towards individual households so that,
by the early 1920s, we should speak of a ‘peasant export economy’ proper. In Buganda,
smallholder cotton cultivation continued to expand gradually up until the 1930s and high
production levels were sustained into the 1960s, even though coffee gradually overtook cotton
as the most important cash crop. Although cotton was first produced in Buganda, the take-off
was more impressive among the neighbouring Basoga who also mainly subsisted on the green
banana. With one fifth the area and one third the population of Buganda, Busoga cultivated
just 20 per cent less cotton than Buganda between 1911 and 1920.55
The success of cotton production on the shores of Lake Victoria is remarkable. In many ways,
the area in fact resembled other regions in Africa where smallholders rejected cotton and
opted for more lucrative tree crop cultivation. The Krobo region in Ghana makes for a case in
55
Nayenga 1981, p. 60
15
point. There, the British colonial authorities made repeated attempts to introduce cotton, but
the crop failed to attract substantial and sustained interest from African smallholders.
Dummett, who studied the Ghanaian case in some detail, concludes that “in areas where soil
and climatic conditions were right, the incentives for concentration on cocoa were far too
strong for farmers to take up simultaneous cultivation of other cash crops, especially cotton,
which required heavy labour inputs and yielded meagre and uncertain returns.”56 Uganda’s
subsequent history proves that agro-ecology cannot be a sufficient explanation for the cotton
take off. In the late-colonial period, smallholders adopted Robusta coffee57 on a large scale in
southern and western Uganda. Recently, smallholders in Western Uganda have also taken to
cocoa.58 Why, then, did smallholders on the fertile shores of Buganda adopt and sustain such
an arduous and seemingly unprofitable crop as cotton? The answer is found in the interplay of
indigenous institutions, colonial interventions and factor endowments.
The initial adoption of cotton should be seen in the context of the transformation of Uganda’s
economy in the early colonial period from relatively isolated and subsistence oriented, to
commercialized and export oriented.59 This transformation entailed the commodification of
land, the introduction of money,60 a poll tax and the increased availability of imported goods,
such as Merikani textiles, bicycles, iron hoes and sheeted roofs.61 Tosh argues that the cash
crop revolutions in Buganda, Yorubaland and southern Ghana can be seen as a ‘vent-forsurplus’ scenario, where new trade opportunities lead smallholders to put previously idle
resources (land and labour) to use in the production of cash crops for exports in order to
expand their consumption of newly introduced commodities.62 The argument hinges on the
idea that labour was underexploited previously, a condition that, Tosh argues, applies to
Uganda’s banana zones. According to him, this explains why “the men <sic> quickly turned
their energies to cash-crop production, in most cases without prompting or pressure from the
government”63
It is, however, debatable to what extent ‘available’ male labour was vital to Uganda’s cotton
revolution, as Tosh insists. The establishment of British hegemony over its newly acquired
territory involved the forging of a close alliance with Christianised Baganda elites. The
legitimacy of these indigenous elites, whose power was further entrenched by their coalition
with the colonizer, created a formidable potential to extract monetary and labour taxes from
the Buganda Kingdom’s peasant population and to communicate top down orders to produce
cash crops.64 Baganda agents were also used to ‘pacify’ and administer surrounding tribes and
56
Dummett 1977
Arabica coffee only grew well on higher altitudes, most notably the slopes of Mount Elgon.
58
Lutheran World Relief “Players and stakeholders in the cocoa value chain of Bundibugyo”, Mountains of the
Moon University, School of Business and Management Studies, Occassional Papers, No. 6, October 2015.
Apparently, this also leads to smallholders abandoning food crops, creating food insecurity. Uganda Radio
Network “Bundibugyo Farmers Abandon Food Crops for Cocoa”, 6 October 2011.
59
Substantial internal trade took place, of course, but the volume of this (entirely headloaded) trade was dwarfed
in comparison with what the arrival of motorized transport made possible.
60
To replace cowry shells and other forms of currency such as barkcloth and cotton textiles.
61
Wrigley, Jorgensen Uganda, p. 52
62
Cf. Jan de Vries’ ‘Industrious Revolution’ argument. De Vries Industrious Revolution.
63
Tosh “Cash crop revolution”
64
An interesting case study of a Baganda chief who actively promoted cotton cultivation among his subordinates
is provided in Nayenga 1981. Hesketh Bell, Governor of Uganda from 1905 to 1910, indeed commented on the
57
16
kingdoms, such as the neighbouring Basoga, and the the Iteso, Langi and Bagwere to the
north and east.65 Before the early 1920s, heavy demands were made on men to engage in all
kinds of labour obligations, including one month of busulu (unpaid work by tenants on the
chief’s estate) one month of luwalo (unpaid communal labour)66, one or two months of
kasanvu (unpaid labour for the colonial state, practiced from 1908 to 1922), and one or two
months of tax labour (which could be ‘bought off’ by paying a poll tax).
On the one hand, these labour demands in fact hampered a quicker expansion of cotton in
Buganda.67 In the early decades of colonial rule, extractions by these agents and the colonial
state from ordinary people were even so severe, that some individuals tried to dodge these
excessive demands by fleeing to areas that were not yet under colonial administrative rule.68
On the other hand, most African men realized that the cultivation of cotton was a relatively
attractive way to satisfy annual colonial tax demands, especially since they could put their
wives to work.69 Women were traditionally responsible for subsistence agriculture in
Buganda. The maintenance of a banana garden required little hard manual labour and its
labour demands were well-distributed throughout the year. With the arrival of cotton, the
women initially took care of much of its cultivation, simply extending their role as
agricultural producers to include cotton cultivation as well.70 At the same time, much of the
forced male labour was used to establish an infrastructure that ultimately benefited the
profitability of cotton and for porterage. This implies that, indirectly, the ‘availability’ of male
labour to construct roads and headload cotton contributed significantly to Buganda’s initial
cotton take-off, while women – partly thanks to the banana – were able to take care of both
food crop and cash crop cultivation.71
It would be incorrect, however, to qualify smallholder production of cotton purely or even
primarily as a response to colonial taxation.72 Neither is it true that colonial authorities
introduced a tax to stimulate cotton production.73 Cotton production also extended
intrusive Cotton Ordinance of 1908: “Regulations of such a drastic nature could hardly have been applied in any
territory which did not enjoy the somewhat unusual conditions which prevail in Uganda. The authority exercised
by the Native Government over the peasantry is so great that the bare orders of the chiefs were expected to
suffice to ensure effective obedience to the rules framed under the ordinance.” Quoted in Nayenga 1981, p. 181.
65
Roberts ‘sub-imperialism’
66
See Kuhanen, p. 176, esp. footnote 117 for more information.
67
As early as 1903, a touring officer reported from western Buganda “there is a good deal of discontent, owing
to the amount of work [the natives] are called to do; the produce scheme is looked on by many as an extra
taxation. [...] They complain they are called so often by the Chiefs to leave their plantations and go off elsewhere
to work, that they get no time to attend to their own cultivation.” Quoted in Kuhanen 2005: 166.
68
Hanson Landed obligation, Vincent ‘Colonial chiefs’
69
Several scholars noted that men gradually became more involved in cotton cultivation, but this transition
largely coincided with the decline of labour obligations and the arrival of male migrants from the 1920s
onwards. See Hanson Landed Obligation, p. 178-9, based on Powesland, pp...
70
The symbiosis between cotton cultivation and food crops in Uganda’s banana zones is illustrated by the high
percentage of cotton acreage intercropped with food crops. In 1963, 51 per cent of the more than 200.000
hectares planted with cotton in Uganda’s banana zones, 51% was intercropped. Uganda Census of Agriculture.
71
Argument is made by Jorgensen, 1981, p. 56 and p. 108. Cf. the importance of forced labour in French West
Africa, Van Waijenburg.
72
As is implied by Kuhanen, p. 173 with reference to Jorgensen 1981, p. 54-55.
73
It would be incorrect, however, to characterize British tax policies in Uganda as a way to stimulate cotton
production. Rather, cotton production was stimulated as a way to increase local tax revenues and gain
independence from the metropolitan treasury. Hence, C.C. Wrigley’s often cited remark that “people were not
17
smallholders’ private purchasing power and economic freedom. Over time, benefits to
growers increased, especially because the power of landlords over their tenants were
progressively scaled back by the British colonial authorities, who realized that an active ‘propeasant’ policy would eventually stimulate a more dynamic and commercialized rural
economy.74
Interestingly, I would propose that the banana may have been more conducive for a cotton
take off in a completely different way. Bananas are a very heavy crop. The edible parts
contain a lot of moisture while half of the weight of a bunch consists of inedible stem and
peel. Moreover, bananas are difficult to store and go bad much more quickly than grains or
dried root crops. As a result, bananas were difficult to transport and market, and hence were
very expensive on the market.75 Hence, to consume their treasured green bananas – the crop
was strongly favoured by the Baganda over cassava, sweet potatoes or maize – Baganda
families basically had to stay put on the farm: being away from the farm as labour migrants
would have rendered banana consumption unaffordable. Hence: because of the particular
characteristics of Buganda’s food crop, sedentary cash crop cultivation was a much more
interesting proposition than migratory wage labour. Although there were many reasons failure
of settler agriculture in early colonial Uganda, the sedentary preference of the majority of
Baganda smallholders may certainly have been a subsidiary one. 76 When large numbers of
labour migrants arrived in the mid-1920s, the fate of settler agriculture in Uganda had
basically already been sealed.
In this context of forceful indirect rule and annual tax demands in a previously non-monetized
economy that characterize early colonial Uganda, investments in tree crops such as coffee or
cocoa – which require a number of years to mature before they start providing a return – may
not have been a feasible option to farmers, despite their lucrative nature in the long run. They
would not have enabled smallholders to satisfy their immediate annual tax obligations, nor
would they have been considered a wise investment in conditions where landlords wielded
considerable power over tenants and their property. Moreover, as in neighbouring Kenya, tree
crops were initially seen as settler crops. From 1898, successful experiments with a wide
range of tree crops were conducted at the botanical gardens in Entebbe, but no seeds or
extension services were provided to native farmers.77
There is indirect evidence that these factors indeed limited tree crop cultivation in Buganda.
When the small settler farming sector of Uganda crumbled in the 1920s, and the colonial
administration definitively committed itself to smallholder production of cash crops, the
taxed in order that they might be made to grow cotton, rather they were urged to grow cotton in order that they
might be able to pay taxes’ Wrigley 1959. Annual grant-in-aid was gradually scaled back during the 1910s. See
Ehrlich Marketing of Cotton, p. 27.
74
The position of Baganda landlords held back cotton production in the 1910s. See Jorgensen 79-80. Wrigley
partly attributes the victory of smallholder agriculture over settler and plantation farming to the ‘radical outlook’
and hostility towards land alienation and settlers of Mr. S. Simpson, Uganda’s director of agriculture from 1911
to 1929 and Francis Spire, Provincial Commissioner of the Eastern Province from 1911 to 1918. Wrigley Crops
and wealth, p. 31-43.
75
Masefield “Some observation”, De Haas “Measuring rural welfare”
76
The failure of settler agriculture in Uganda is discussed in Taylor 1978, Youe 1978
77
Cite evidence
18
powers of Baganda landlords over their tenants were considerably scaled back. Smallholders,
both tenant and (small) landowners, immediate began to invest in tree crops (coffee), for
which they probably accumulated savings which resulted from years of cotton cultivation.78
Still, Buganda never saw the development of indigenous ‘agrarian capitalism’ such observed
among farmers in Ghana’s forest belt.79 As security of tenure of smallholders increased,
regulations also made it increasingly difficult for landowners to evict tenants. As a result,
smallholders and landlords ended up in a ‘deadlock’ situation.80 Moreover, an expatriate
minority of South Asians controlled the nascent trading and industrial agro-processing sector
of Uganda, and aspiring African capitalists were actively barred from entry into these sectors,
all the way up to the late colonial period.81
Perhaps cotton was a ‘sub-optimal’ cash crop from the perspective of the smallholder who
tried to maximize his returns to labour. Still, the benefits accruing to smallholders should not
be underestimated, especially because smallholders continued to grow cotton en masse, even
after the coercive incentives largely disappeared. The flocks of labour migrants drawn to
Buganda also testify to the enthusiasm with which Africans adopted cotton cultivation. From
the 1920s onwards, tens or even hundreds of thousands of migrants from Uganda’s
underdeveloped peripheries as well as from beyond its borders poured into Buganda
annually.82 Initially, most migrants were single men who were seeking quick cash to
supplement the family income. They were keen on avoiding recruitment for expatriate
employers, and preferred to engage in wage labour for Baganda smallholders. In the words of
a colonial labour commission, they ‘disappeared’ in the countryside.83 Sharecropping
arrangements were popular, and cotton was highly suitable: a migrant would rent a small
piece of land for six months to grow and harvest cotton, bearing his own responsibility and
risk. Noting that the steep rise in Buganda’s cotton acreage in the 1930s did not translate into
similar production increase probably testifies to the presence of large number of new arrivals
78
The annual reports of the Department of Agriculture describe ‘greatly increased interest in coffee cultivation’
during the 1920s (quote from the 1924 report). Nurseries were established to distribute Robusta seedlings. For
example, in 1923, the Government Plantation distributed 46.128 plants. In 1937, 769.000 plants were distributed
from 23 nurseries. “ One of the most important consequences of the Busulu and Envujo Law [which restricted
rent and tithes] was that, over time, it made possible the rise of small-scale capitalist farmers who, given the
secure tenure required for bringing coffee trees to maturity (two to three years), shifted from cotton to producing
coffee for the world market, using migrant labour from outside Buganda. Robusta coffee acreage on African
holdings in Buganda rose from less than 1.000 acres in 1925 to 16.170 in 1930, 32..255 in 1938, 62.636 in 1944
and 142.523 in 1946. The role of security of tenure in the uneven emergence of perennial cash crop cultivation in
Uganda is discussed in Jorgensen Uganda, pp. 87-106.
79
Austin, Land, labour and capital in Ghana
80
Richards et al Subsistence to commercial farming
81
Jorgensen, p. 53. The landlords themselves could have become capitalists, but the colonial state actively
discouraged the entry of Africans into wholesale trade and cotton ginning. Moreover, due to legislation
protecting tenants, it became progressively difficult for landlords to evict tenants, which made the use of land as
collateral increasingly unattractive. See Jorgensen 1981, p. 154-61, cf. Ehrlich “Paternalism”, Richards et al.
Subsistence to commercial farming
82
Richards (ed) Economic development
83
Look up reference
19
with very little experience with the cultivation of cotton.84 Over time, increasing numbers of
migrants established a permanent tenancy themselves.85
The story of cotton in Uganda’s banana zones illustrates how a crop that provided inferior
returns to labour ended up being cultivated on a large scale by African smallholders who were
facing risks that prevented the adoption of more lucrative cash crops such as coffee. It also
shows how different types of coercion, such as labour obligations to build roads and the
introduction of annual tax demands occasioned (but also limited) the initial adoption of
cotton. It also illustrates that the sustained cultivation of cotton in Uganda cannot be explained
as the outcome of coercion, but probably resulted from the fact that cotton provided a suitable,
quick source of income, especially for labour migrants, while most smallholders did what we
would expect them to do: switch to more lucrative tree crops.
3.2. Uganda’s savannah in a West African mirror
The situation in Uganda’s northern and eastern regions was quite different. Uganda’s grain
zones are quite typical for the savanna agro-ecological zones in Africa, providing
smallholders with a much more limited set of possible crops to grow for subsistence and sale.
The severity of dry spells precluded the cultivation of tree crops such as coffee or cocoa,
which are vulnerable to episodes of drought.86 For similar reasons, conditions in northern and
eastern Uganda were much less suitable for the cultivation of green bananas.87 Since the bulk
of smallholders’ calories were obtained from labour-intensive grain crops such as millet and
sorghum, the ‘banana argument’ does not apply to these areas. Hence, if we follow the
generalized narrative that this paper criticizes, we would expect cotton to fail because of
competition with food crops and seasonal labour shortages. The hesitation of smallholders of
the Lango tribe to adopt cotton, as described by Tosh, fits well within this narrative.88
However, smallholders of the Teso tribe, with a similar prominence of cereals in their diet,
rapidly adopted cotton, even more impressively so than the Baganda and Basoga (see figure
below). Apparently, their labour-intensive, grain-based food crop regime did not prevent Iteso
smallholders from quickly and practically universally adopting cotton during the early
decades of colonial rule. How did they manage to overcome labour scarcity and combine the
cultivation of food crops and cotton?
84
Kuhanen 2005: 184
References
86
Jorgensen notes that “ the severe December-March dry season precludes coffee cultivation.” Jorgensen
Uganda, p. 98.
87
Although the banana versus millet distinction should not be reduced to ecological determinism: the Nilotic
Iteso also had a strong cultural preference for millet and sorghum (which was not only cultivated for food, but
also beer making) in a way similar to the cultural preference for banana among their Bantu counterparts in
southern Buganda
88
Tosh 1978
85
20
Figure. Hectares under cotton cultivation per thousand
population (1910: total acreage)
Buganda
Busoga
(22.000)
(8.000)
1910
17
49
1911-20
85
123
1921-30
Source: Jorgensen Uganda, p. 79-80
Teso
(5.500)
73
175
The initial adoption of cotton could be explained as a typical case of colonial coercion. The
benefits of cotton cultivation first accrued primarily to a small class of indigenous Iteso elites,
as well as Baganda agents who had been given support and free reign by their British
overlords to conquer and administer what was known as ‘Bukedi’ (the land of the naked
peoples) in the early decades of colonial rule.89 Chiefs enlisted labour to grow cotton in their
own fields and make handsome profits.90 Increasingly, however, cotton was cultivated on
individualized smallholdings and, as will become clear, quickly became the main source of
households’ private income. Its eventual collapse as a result of institutional failure in the
1970s is still widely lamented by farmers.
Let us now look closer at how Iteso farmers overcame the challenge of labour bottlenecks and
food insecurity typical for the African savanna, and how they integrated cotton into their
farming practices. To begin with, it has to be acknowledged that the area inhabited by the
Iteso has a relatively stretched out agricultural season, compared to most other savanna areas.
In fact, because of a bimodal rainfall distribution, Iteso farmers can harvest crops twice
annually. This ability to harvest twice is certainly likely to have benefited food security and to
have smoothened the integration of cotton into farming practices. Nevertheless, the serious
seasonal labour bottlenecks did occur, especially when the first crop had to be harvested and
the fields prepared for the second one. Iteso farmers devised a range of strategies to solve
these bottlenecks.
First of all, as is characteristic for savanna farming systems, the Iteso knew mutual and
communal labour arrangements, enabling smallholder to pool labour resources, which
contributed to the efficient allocation of labour in times of need. Secondly, in the early
decades of cotton cultivation, most of the crop was grown in the second rainy season, and
only after the millet planted in the first and most reliable rainy season had matured
sufficiently.91 Thirdly, the cultivation of high yielding crops such as cassava and sweet potato
expanded considerably, which increased food security while freeing up labour for cotton. 92
Fourthly, and most spectacularly, Teso farmers went through quite an impressive
‘productivity breakthrough’, which involved the almost universal adoption of the ox plough.
89
Baganda sub-imperialism, Vincent, Vail, Twaddle Kakangulu
Vail Agricultural innovation, p. ??
91
Smallholders postposed cotton planting to late May, June or July to complete early weeding of finger millet,
“a compromise which minimized by ensuring adequate food production rather than maximum cash-crop output.”
(Jorgensen Uganda, p. 104)
92
It is interesting to note that, in contrast with Uganda’s banana zones, cotton was hardly ever intercropped with
food crops in the grain areas. On the more than 250.000 hectares planted with cotton in 1963, only 11% was
intercropped. Uganda Census of agriculture.
90
21
The number of ploughs in Teso rose spectacularly, from practically zero in 1910, to 240 in
1922, 19.894 in 1939 and 60.000 in 1962.93 Figure 1 provides insight into the resultant
seasonal distribution of rainfall and labour in Teso.
Figure 1
20%
250
18%
16%
200
14%
12%
150
10%
8%
100
6%
4%
50
Millimeters of rainfall
Share of total annual labour demands
Teso (North-Eastern Uganda)
2%
0%
0
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
Cotton
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Food crops
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Rainfall
Source: Vail Agricultural innovation
Although the agricultural innovations that characterize Teso give a proximate explanation of
how cotton could be integrated into the grain-based farming system, the deeper question of
why this happened in Teso and not in other savanna farming systems where cotton was
attempted but failed.
To some extent, it should not come as a surprise that smallholders in the harsh climate of
West Africa were reluctant to devote a substantial amount of household labour resources to
the cultivation of a non-edible and meagrely remunerated cash crop. While Uganda’s
savannas are endowed with 7 to 9 months of >100 millimeters of rainfall, West Africa’s
savannas typically only receive >100 millimeters of rain in 5 to 7 months of the year. This
means that labour requirements are much more concentrated, and food security a particularly
serious concern in the West African savannah (see figure 2). These realities are illustrated in
the distribution of rainfall and labour inputs into food crop cultivation figure below (the point
becomes even more clear when this figure is compared with the figure on Teso above).
93
This calculation is cumulative and ignores losses due to breakage and wear. Jorgensen Uganda, pp. 104-5
22
Figure 2
Katiali (Northern Côte d'Ivoire)
250
18%
16%
200
14%
12%
150
10%
8%
100
6%
4%
Millimeters of rainfall
Share of total annual labour demands
20%
50
2%
0%
0
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Food crops
Jun
Jul
Aug
Cotton
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Rainfall
Source: Bassett Peasant cotton revolution
However, even smallholders in Cote d’Ivoire eventually switched massively to cotton, as
noted before. Apparently, the matrix of returns to labour, risks and coercive factors. In this
case, the shift came with a process of considerable investments, institutional and
technological innovation and a degree of coercion associated with public-private initiatives
spurred by la Compagnie Francaise pour le Developpement des fibres Textiles (CFDT).94
Such consorted efforts were not required to make cotton a lucrative proposition to
smallholders in Uganda. Nevertheless, investment and innovation were also crucial in the
sustained success of cotton in Uganda.
3.3. Making cotton work for Uganda’s smallholders
How did cotton in Uganda provide smallholders with returns to labour that made them willing
to cultivate the crop, even after most coercive institutions and cotton directives were scaled
back? As we will now set out to show, the relatively high returns to labour resulted from a
dense ginnery and transport network that obliterated the need for arduous head loading of
cotton, and modest but reliable yield of high and consistent quality cotton fibre, which fetched
a good price in the highly competitive global market for cotton.95 These conditions would
probably not have been realized without the involvement of a set of relatively closely aligned
actors, which included, the Protectorate Government, Native Authorities, the newly founded
94
Basset Peasant cotton revolution, p. 24-5, Lele & Van de Walle (1989) Cotton in Africa: an analysis of
differences in performance
95
Typically, Ugandan cotton yields averaged some 200-400 pounds per acre, although with considerable greater
variation between individual years and farmers. Yields in the ‘banana’ areas tended to be slightly higher than the
‘grain’ areas. Nye and Hosking ‘history and development’, in Tothil 1940, p. 190, cf. De Haas ‘Measuring rural
welfare’.
23
British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) and private commercial parties from Europe,
India and Japan.96
The state adopted a top-down, directive and sometimes coercive strategy to assure ‘export
quality cotton’. A case in point was a far-reaching and very specific cotton growing
instructions were introduced in 1908, which forced spacing, stalk burning and controlled seed
distribution upon smallholders.97 At the same time, the state committed itself to facilitating
farmers to produce a high quality crop. The state, in conjunction with the BCGA and ginners,
was closely involved in finding a suitable, resistant and high quality cotton variety. The first
cotton experiment station was opened in 1911.98 A highly organized system of seed selection
and distribution was erected, and the state laid out a considerable infrastructure of research
stations and experimental farms.
The state, in conjunction with the Uganda Company and the BCGA took a lead role in
importing and further developing cotton seeds, considering issues such as staple length,
ginning yield and disease resistance. Trails were conducted with of strains of Gossypium
Barbadense (Lowland varieties found locally by the 19th century99, and imported from Egypt)
and Gossypium Hirsetum-Latifolium (Upland varieties imported from the U.S.A. and
Nyasaland).100 Confusingly, the high-quality, long-staple ‘Buganda Local’ variety that
became to characterize Ugandan export cotton was primarily based on the (imported)
American Upland varieties ‘Allen’ and ‘Sunflower’, albeit further developed locally and
‘probably mixed and interpollinated with other varieties’.101 In his critique of the BCGA’s
cotton breeding efforts in Africa, Robins seems to mistakenly assume that ‘Buganda local’
refers to indigenous cotton. Considering the quick success of newly imported American
cotton varieties in Uganda within a few years of the establishment of the industry, his
conclusion that “hybrid cottons succeeded only after decades of research that replicated what
had already been going on in African fields for centuries” comes across as too negative and
dismissive of the successful colonial cotton research efforts in Uganda.102 The introduction of
the SATU variety towards the end of the colonial period illustrates the complex history of
cotton breeding in Uganda. This variety was developed on the basis of a particular Northern
Nigerian strain of cotton that was in turn based on a variety of Uganda-bred “Allen” variety
that was imported into Nigeria in 1912!103 This variety also illustrates the ultimate success of
breeding efforts. Farmers interviewed during my oral history fieldwork in Teso district were
96
Jorgensen, 1981, p. 53-4. The British Cotton Growing Association was found in 1902, ‘at a moment so
propitious for Uganda’ Ehrlich Marketing of Cotton, p. 28
97
According to Jorgensen, this piece of legislation shows how ‘compulsion was the instrument chosen to ensure
that growers produced high quality cotton.’. Jorgensen 1981, p. 152-3. Failure to abide by the legislation could
result in imprisonment. See Nayenga 1981, p. 184
98
Nye and Hosking ‘history and development’, in Tothil 1940, p. 185. The stations became particularly
important in the development of new cotton varieties: Serere and Bukalasa. See Tothill 1940: pp. 101-10.
99
Although originally from the New World, Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 31-2
100
Overviews are provided in Nye and Hosking ‘history and development’, in Tothil 1940 and Arnold ‘Origins
and characteristics’ in Jameson and Tothill 1970
101
Arnold ‘Origins and characteristics’ in Jameson and Tothill 1970, p. 154.
102
Robins ‘Black man’s crop”, p. 16-7
103
Arnold ‘Origins and characteristics’ in Jameson and Tothill 1970, p. 162-3
24
so satisfied by the characteristics of this new variety that they stopped calling it ‘cotton’
(Epaba) and started referring to the crop by its variety name (‘Albar’).104
While scholars have sometimes discarded the colonial administration’s cotton breeding
programs as misguided attempts to override indigenous agricultural practices, they have –
somewhat paradoxically – also criticized the colonial administration for paying insufficient
attention to food crop yields and have failed to consider African farmers’ food security. Still,
with limited resources and often through top-down directives, the state managed to expand the
production of cassava and sweet potatoes which – especially among grain farmers – served
well as famine reserve crops,105 and regulated the use of individual and communal granaries
to secure a permanent food stock in case of a disappointing harvest. These measures, although
forcibly introduced through legislation and a credible threat of fines or imprisonment, were
certainly not uniformly perceived as bad by African farmers.106 Ploughing, which was such a
vital component in the ability of the Iteso to expand cotton cultivation was also actively
stimulated by the colonial administration, through active sales of ploughs, and the
establishment of a ploughing school in Kumi (1910), which was key in the adoption of the
plough among the Iteso.107
At the same time it is true that agricultural education was minor and few attempts were made
to advance smallholder agriculture beyond the initial adoption of cash crops in the early
colonial period. The American Phelps-Stokes Education Commission, which investigated the
state of education in colonial Africa in 1920, noted that “with all the wealth of agricultural
resources in the Protectorate there is not a single agricultural school to prepare the natives to
take advantage of their wealth. The few institutions that give any attention to the subject are
negligible.”108 It is telling that, still, in 1946 that there was only one African enrolled in the
agricultural program at Makerere University (Kampala), while only a limited number of
African students frequented agricultural school at Bukalasa.109 Writing on Busoga, Nayenga
notes that
“Aside from providing seeds, the government established experimental farms at Jinja
and Naminage to determine which cotton seeds were best suited to Busoga soils as well
as to serve as educational centers for Africans learning ploughing and harrowing. To
104
‘Al’ refers to the Allen Upland variety, ‘bar’ to “blackarm [disease] resistant”.
Cassava was pushed by the colonial state as a famine reserve crop, using both ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’. Households
were required “to plant at least one-fourth acre of both cassava and sweet potato before sowing other first rains
crops.” The colonial state also made systematic efforts to supply sweet potato and cassava cuttings to farmers.
See Vail Agricultural Innovation, p. 108-9. Also see Tothill 1940, p. 135.
106
During my fieldwork in Teso, one respondent (12/09/2016, in Kaberamaido District), who had been a chief in
the colonial era argued that “if you breached ‘bye laws’, you could be imprisoned. These were good laws. People
were illiterate and needed guidance” Another respondent (07/092015 in Bukedea District) who lived through the
late colonial era reasoned that “the introduction of cotton went hand in hand with coercion, but when farmers
realized it was in their own interest, it became voluntary. A similar thing happened with cassava and
groundnuts.” A third respondent (09/09/2015, in Ngora District) explained to me that “the colonial authorities
forced people to maintain their own granaries well-stocked. One granary had to be full and sealed. It could only
be opened with government permission. They would come to inspect. This was a good rule. It prevented
famines.”
107
Vail Agricultura innovation
108
Qutoed in Jorgensen Uganda, p. 182
109
Jorgensen Uganda, p. 166
105
25
ensure successful cotton cultivation further, the governor set up a chain of command
consisting of Provincial and District Commissioners, Agricultural Officers, and African
chiefs to control Basoga.”110
Secondly, the state, in conjunction with European and Asian commercial interests, contributed
to a fine-grained and highly regulated marketing infrastructure which included a reliable road
and railroad network which was suitable for lorry transport and a high density of ginneries.111
It was particularly imperative that smallholders were relieved from having to go through the
time consuming and painstaking effort of head loading their bulky seed cotton to distant
markets. Because the arduous nature of transportation of the harvested crop antagonized
farmers far more than the actual cultivation of the crop, this was a crucial investment.112 The
number of cotton ginneries in Uganda increased rapidly. The first ginnery was built in 1905.
By 1919 there were 7 ginneries in Buganda, 11 in Busoga, 12 in Teso, and another 7 ginneries
in other areas of the Eastern Province. By 1922 – only three years later – the number of
ginneries had more than doubled, from 37 to 83.113 The rapid expansion of ginneries was
mostly the result of Indian ginners and traders entering the business. The first Indian ginnery
was established in 1913 in Jinja (Busoga).114 Whereas initially Uganda’s entire cotton crop
was shipped to Liverpool, the share of cotton destined for India rose to over 90 per cent in
1935. Bombay became an entrepôt for re-export to Britain and Japan, but also for local millers
which established ginneries in Uganda.115
The presence of Indian entrepreneurs was probably a boon for Uganda’s cotton industry.
Cotton ginning provides a difficult business case: the establishment of a gin requires
considerable capital investment, and the machines lay idle for most of the year. Profitability is
always under pressure, especially since supply is so susceptible to annual fluctuations in yield.
Indian entrepreneurs were more able and willing to cut costs and accept much more modest
profits and more basic living conditions than their more entitled European counterparts.116
110
Nayenga 1981, p. 178
“In the 1920s and 1930s the availability of cheap rail transport was a key determinant in the price paid by
ginneries to growers for seed cotton.” Jorgensen 1981, p. 111
112
In the early years, enormous amounts of human porterage were required to transport the crop. The
Department of Agriculture calculated that for the 1914 crop in Eastern Province added up to 0.5 million porter
loads. Jorgensen Uganda, p. 55-56). On a tour in Buganda, governor Heskett Bell noted in 1909 that, although
farmers had industriously planted and tended their cotton, “the idea of having to carry their crops on their heads
all the way to the ginneries at Kampala, ninety miles off, was much more than they were prepared to do.” Quoted
in Jorgensen Uganda p. 55. Also see Jorgensen Uganda, p. 56 and p. 108. Due to smallholders’ resistance to
headloading their cotton, they prefer to leave it on the stalk, only to be burned at the end of the cropping season.
Interestingly, Jonathan Robins interprets this behaviour signals that farmers did not want to “[wast] labour on
what they deemed to be a poorly paying crop,” and, in his broader argument, as proof that cotton did not pay in
Africa. I choose to interpret this as the initial failure of the state to facilitate transport and marketing. See Robins
‘Black man’s crop’, p. 82
113
Jorgensen Uganda, p. 57
114
By the pioneering and well-capitalized Indian entrepreneur Allidina Visram.
115
E.g. the Bombay firm Narandas Rajaran & Company, which established multiple ginneries in Uganda from
1916 onwards to gin cotton for its cloth mills in India. See Jorgensen Uganda, p. 57
116
Indeed, Jorgensen argues that “because of substantially lower salaries paid to Indian managerial and technical
staffs, the Indian-owned ginneries were generally more profitable than their European competitors.” (Jorgensen
Uganda, p. 57). Note that ginneries, both Indian and European, also tried to mitigate costs by employing child
labourers on a large scale. Jorgensen Uganda, p. 57 and p. 166). There is also much talk of “cheating” –
especially the rigging of scales – during the marketing season. Although cotton growers complained about these
111
26
The low-cost nature of the Indian dominated processing industry contributed to the relatively
small scale of Uganda’s ginneries which meant that they could be erected in more location
and smallholders could be more easily serviced.117 Increasingly, the state came to regulate the
relationship between ginneries and smallholders, by introducing minimum prices and buying
zones.118 Ginneries also played a pivotal role in the distribution of cotton seed. Above all,
however, the high density of ginneries assured African cotton growers of an outlet for their
crop at fixed times and at predictable price levels during the year. Most ginneries had evolved
into veritable shopping and trading centres.119 During the marketing season, which lasted
from December to February, farmers not only sold their cotton, but also paid their poll tax and
school fees, while buying cloth and “cows for Christmas.”120 One interviewee in Teso
introduced me to a Teso proverb: “money stays in your hands”121 This proverb was used in
reference to cotton and referred to the fact that cotton income came in bulk once a year, which
enabled farmers to make substantial investments, and forced them to be frugal throughout the
remainder of the year. He added that “now that we only cultivate food crops [for both home
consumption and sale], it feels like the money evaporates from your hands.122 Another
interviewee summarized this dynamic aptly: “the good thing about cotton was that people
could not eat it. They had to spend it on school fees.”123
Similar attempts to create an institutional and infrastructural network to make cotton work
were attempted in French West Africa, but failed. Why? Both Bassett and Roberts describe
how the French colonial administration struggled to find a marketing arrangement which
would be attractive to both French capitalist firms and African smallholders. In the words of
Bassett
Senior administrators saw themselves as playing an important role in breaking what they saw as
a “vicious cycle” in which textile firms were hesitant to invest in ginning and shipping
machinery unless they were guaranteed sufficient quantities of cotton at prices low enough to
ensure a profit. They believed that “only a powerful and disinterested agent” such as the
colonial state could break this cycle, which would lead to both the “creation of new resources in
practices, and the colonial state was worried that cheating would undermine smallholders’ interest in cotton, the
significance of this practice should also not be overstated. See for a critique Ehrlich ‘Paternalism’ Note that
eventually Africans also entered the ginnery business from the late 1940s onwards, most often as cooperative
business.
117
“The erection of ginneries shortened distances growers had to walk to sell their cotton, two-thirds of which
comprised seeds – an unmarketable waste product at the time.” Nayenga 1981, p. 188.
118
Some scholars have interpreted marketing and price regulations which were progressively introduced in the
cotton sector not as a way to streamline the business, equalize grower prices, assure quality and improve
relations between growers and ginners, but as a means to ‘protect monopolies, increase inefficiencies in
marketing and processing and lower the prices paid to growers.’ Quote from Jorgensen Uganda, p. 145. An
overview of key legislations and their consequences. is given in Jorgensen Uganda, p. 145-53.Other critiques
include Ehrlich Paternalism, Mamdani 1876, Brett 1976.
119
Ehrlich Marketing, p. 13
120
Cite “cows for Christmas”
121
My research assistant transcribed the original saying in Ateso as follows: “esalitosi isirgin akan”
122
Moses (10/09/2015, in Soroti District)
123
Deborah (09/09/2015, in Ngora District)
27
regions lacking exportable products” and the marketing of raw material badly needed by the
metropolitan textile industry.124
The problem of attracting European capitalists – compared to Uganda’s South Asians125 – and
its effect on smallholders, is well-illustrated by the grower price differential between Uganda
and French West Africa, and between European buyers and local buyers in French West
Africa. In 1917, French merchant houses paid smallholders in Cote d’Ivoire 0.35 Fr/Kg
(Franc per kilogram) of seed cotton which, following official exchange rates, was 67 per cent
of the grower price paid to Ugandan smallholders. In 1925, growers received 1.75 Fr/Kg, 63
per cent of their Ugandan counterparts. In 1927 prices in Cote d’Ivoire and Mali were
particularly low, with farmers receiving a meagre 0.6 Fr/Kg, only 28 per cent of Ugandan
smallholders. In response to this situation, the colonial state established a minimum
purchasing price for cotton, criticizing the ‘unscrupulous’ behaviour of European cotton
traders, and arguing that “prices should be determined by market rates prevailing at Le Havre
minus ginning and transportation costs.”126 Prices in Cote d’Ivoire rebounded temporarily to
1.75 Fr/Kg (64 per cent of Uganda) in 1928,127 before declining again to 0.65 Fr/Kg (47 per
cent of Uganda) in 1931.128 At least in some year, local merchants paid much better prices, in
the meanwhile: 1 Fr/Kg in 1917 (192 per cent of Uganda) in 1917, and 3.6 Fr/Kg in 1925
(129 per cent of Uganda). To shorten the distance African smallholders had to carry their
cotton to market, and to ensure fair prices, the colonial state set up regional market “ fairs”,
where smallholders could sell their cotton. However, as Roberts vividly describes, these fairs
in fact became sites of coercion and control.129 In the words of Bassett, “although the
implementation of the fairs varied within as well as between the colonies, they all shared the
common element of coercion in the guise of free markets.”130 People were forced to sell
cotton. If they did not have any, they had to buy fellow villagers, often at a high price. If
quality was insufficient, farmers were sent to jail for a few days. Merchants commonly
cheated sellers, by underweighing produce. 131
In these conditions, the French colonial authorities failed to incentivize savanna smallholders
to expand cotton cultivation. Instead, they attempted military-style compulsory cropping, on
so called ‘commander’s fields’, under the supervision of ‘district guards’.132 If individuals or
groups were though to display insufficient exertion, guards resorted to intimidation,
124
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 62
Interestingly, in explaining the eventual success of cotton in FWA, Lele et al. mention the absence of Indian
traders and ginners: “ Another clue to the greater commitment of francophone Africa to cotton may lie in the
absence of a minority business community, such as the Asians of Kenya and Tanzania [and Uganda], antagonism
to whom led to premature indigenization of the sector.” Lele et al. Cotton in Africa, p. 26
126
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 66
127
But remained at a low 0.8 Fr/Kg (29% of Uganda) in Soudan. See Roberts in Roberts & Isaacman, p. ?
128
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, pp. 66, 79. For Ugandan prices see De Haas “Measuring rural welfare” .
Exchange rates from Lawrence H. Officer, "Exchange Rates Between the United States Dollar and Forty-one
Currencies,", MeasuringWorth, 2016
129
Insert reference to Roberts
130
Cotton was bought by European buyers, but smallholders could choose the buyers, hence the ‘free market’
element. Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 70
131
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 76
132
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 58
125
28
humiliation and public whipping.133 Farmers were also expected to cultivate cotton in their
own village plots. Agricultural Service extension agents visited villages to provide
smallholders with instructions on thinning, topping, weeding and burning of cotton plants
after harvests. District guards also visited villages, to inspect fields and see if farmers were
complying with orders. If they were not pleased, smallholders were forced to return to the
commander’s fields.” 134 In 1946 forced labour was officially abolished. Bassett summarizes
the preceding era as follows: “Only when compelled through administrative coercion would
cotton growers produce for the export market. When coercion let up, cotton exports fell
dramatically.”
It is impossible to find out ‘counterfactually’ if cotton production in Teso would have taken
off in a similar way it had not benefited from the colonial administration’s commitment to
Uganda’s smallholder cotton sector which initially took off in Buganda and Busoga. The
savanna conditions in which more lucrative tree crops did not grow well, in combination with
a relatively well-spread distribution of rainfall may have given Teso’s smallholders sufficient
incentives to grow cotton on their own initiative. However, why, then, were the Langi, their
northern neighbours initially so hostile to cotton cultivation? It is true that the rainy season in
Lango was somewhat shorter than the one in Teso, which may have provided Langi farmers
with more intricate food security challenges. At the same time, political and institutional
factors may equally plausibly explain the hostility. The Langi were particularly adamant in
their resistance to incorporation into the Baganda sphere of influence. The forceful opposition
of Baganda rule in Teso may suppressed resistance and forced smallholders to engage in
cotton cultivation.135 It is quite telling that Lango cotton production increased from a meagre
6,300 acres in 1915, to 71,500 acres in 1928, a development that Jorgensen attribute to the
“construction of local ginneries and improvements in the road network which reduced the
need to headload seed cotton over long distances.”136 A similar story, albeit somewhat later,
and perhaps involving a higher degree of top-down compulsion applies to Acholi district, the
most northern of Uganda’s cotton growing areas.137 Eventually, only in those areas that
remained “beyond the expanding network of roads and ginneries” did cash crop production in
colonial Uganda remain negligible.138
Again it is interesting to make a comparison with Ghana. Dummett argues that cotton may
have succeeded in the dryer fringes of the forest zone, if the colonial state had invested in
ginneries, marketing infrastructure and programs to fight crop disease. However, the Gold
Coast administration displayed a lack of commitment, which probably resulted from the state
being insufficiently incentivized to make cotton a success, considering the booming taxable
cocoa export. In Uganda, instead, the state was committed, because cotton was the solution to
133
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 59
Bassett Peasant cotton revolution, p. 60
135
Jorgensen summarizes this argument, which also plays a subsidiary role in Tosh’ argument as follows: “ the
colonial state's cotton promotion was hardly designed to endear Langi to large-scale cultivation [of cotton]. For
the first time Langi males had to perform corvée, initially on the official estates of ‘Ganda agents’ sent to
administer Lango, then on the estates of very untraditional Langi chiefs appointed to replace the agents after
1911” Jorgensen Uganda, p. 101, cf. Tosh ‘Lango agriculture’
136
Jorgensen Uganda, p. 101
137
Jorgensen Uganda, p. 98
138
Jorgensen Uganda, p. 56, cf. Kuhanen 2005, p. 178
134
29
the colonial administration’s challenge of finding a profitable ‘business model’ to run its
newly acquired territory.
From a ‘moral’ or even ‘developmental’ perspective, it seems reasonable to argue that the
colonial state could – and should – have shown more commitment to agricultural extension
and the advancement of Uganda’s rural population more generally.139 At the same time,
defined more narrowly as “striving for the large-scale and sustained adoption of cotton for
export among Uganda’s smallholders”, the colonial state’s efforts should surely be considered
largely successful. The state’s strategy of using top-down directives rather than extension, and
to focus on crop research and the implementation of a functioning marketing system was
sufficient for a peasant cotton revolution to take place in Uganda. Uganda’s smallholders
proved able and willing to implement cotton at a relatively low level of agricultural
sophistication and with only some initial modification of farming practices.140 The adoption of
cotton did not involve major labour productivity increases (with the exception, perhaps, of the
plough) and no land productivity (yield) increases. In other words, growth was extensive: it
resulted from more resources were mobilized for the production of cotton. In Ugandan
conditions – particularly the strong indigenous institutions, the presence of labour migrants in
Buganda, the efficient Indian-run ginnery industry, and the relatively long rainy season in the
grain-growing savanna regions – a necessary but limited set of state interventions apparently
sufficed to make cotton a success.
3.4. Concluding the case of Uganda
While farmers in the well-endowed banana zones of Uganda already gradually began to
prioritize coffee over cotton during the colonial and early post-colonial era, the production of
cotton in the grain zones reached its peak in the 1960s. The highest ever five-year-average of
cotton exported from Uganda (expressed in terms of volume) was recorded from 1964 to
1968.141 Not only did cotton production peak in this period, the initiative lay increasingly with
African entrepreneurs and farmer cooperatives who entered trading and ginning in this period.
In the late 1940s, African farmers had begun to organize around grievances about the large
gap between prices paid to cultivators and prices on the world market, as well as the exclusion
of Africans in the highly state-regulated cotton trading and ginning sector. These grievances
culminated in a cotton hold-up in 1948-49. The colonial state responded by allowing Africans
139
Even before the rise of dependency theory and underdevelopment scholarship, this point was eloquently made
by Cyril Ehrlich in Ehrlich Marketing, refined in Ehrlich ‘Paternalism’, and extended to British Tropical Africa
in Ehrlich ‘Building and caretaking’. With reference to Teso, Vail also makes an interesting point when he points
out that “the British pursued a policy of local self-sufficiency in foodstuffs throughout East Africa” even though
“there are examples from Ghana, India and other less-developed economies to suggest that emphasis on a market
solution to food crises [...] might have contributed more to the long run evolution of specialization and increased
productivity in Teso agriculture” Vail Agricultural innovation, p. 111
140
On Busoga, Nayenga remarks that “cotton cultivation did not bring novel organizational and technological
innovations. The hoe still remained the chief agricultural implement and, although more land was brought under
cultivation, little effort was made to make a more productive use of the available resources.” (Nayenga 1981, p.
189). A very similar statement on Buganda can be found in Wrigley Crops and wealth, p. 57, and on Teso (after
the adoption of the plough) in Vincent Teso in transformation, p. XX
141
Uganda Trade Statistics
30
to enter the processing industry. By 1953, African cooperative societies controlled 5
ginneries. By 1960, they controlled 12 out of 130 ginneries (9 per cent). After independence,
African (cooperative) ownership of ginneries rose quickly. Farmers in Teso remember the
1950s and 1960s as a period of relative prosperity. Without exception, the participants in my
oral history fieldwork were very positive about cotton cultivation in (late) colonial and early
post-colonial period, stressing the vital contribution of the crop to the accumulation of cattle,
the payment of bride wealth and the education of children.142
Equally unanimous, the farmers regretted the demise of cotton in the post-colonial era due to
institutional collapse, corruption and civil strife. Some of them argued that, already in the
1960s under Obote I, cooperatives were mismanaged and failed to pay their members
promptly.143 Others pointed out that trouble began in the 1970s under Idi Amin, when
corruption became rampant, institutions and infrastructure disintegrated and in the words of
one interviewee, “people were afraid to be prosperous.”144 By the end of Idi Amin’s rule,
cotton exports had dwindled to negligible levels. Economic activity further suffered during
the violent civil strife that plagued Uganda during the 1980s. Teso was particularly hit hard
during an insurgency in the late 1980s. Not only did many Iteso lose their lives and were
internally displaced, they also lost virtually all wealth they had industriously accumulated in
cattle over the previous decades.
Even though peace has returned to Teso and despite some attempts to reinstate cotton and to
introduce a range of other cash crops such as oranges and rice, farmers are still lamenting the
demise of the cotton. Cotton cultivation involved hard work, but at least provided ordinary
families with a reliable annual cash flow and a means to obtain farm inputs, accumulate cattle
and educate their children.145 The present day situation is illustrative of the bigger message
that this paper tries to convey. A large number of the interviewed farmers in Teso were
urgently calling for support, pointing at failing marketing system, poor extension services, the
lack of inputs and the absence of credit facilities as key obstacles to rural development. In the
dry, labour-constrained savanna, state supported cotton cultivation may not have been such an
undesirable affair.
142
Admittedly, among my ~30 interviewies, successful cotton farmers were probably overrepresented, since my
‘snowballing’ strategy targeted individuals who are still recognized for having been cotton farmers, thus
probably biasing my sample towards successful cotton farmers.. This does not mean they were all born with the
proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Some of them were clearly from humble beginnings and had been able to
become successful through intelligent farm management, perseverance and probably an element of luck.
143
Cooper (08/09/2015, in Kumi District), John (09/09/2015, in Ngora District), Martin (09/09/2015, in Ngora
District) and Vincent (09/16/2015, in Amuria District).
144
Quote from Bisasio (07/09/2015, in Bukedea District). Also Silver (11/09/2015, in Serere District) and Moses
(10/09/2015, in Soroti District)
145
Michael (16/09/2015, in Amuria District) concurred that “cotton was a lot of work” but added that “we had a
good life in those days. We Iteso appreciate hard work! If your clothes wear off around the knees and elbows,
this means that you are a hard worker. If you clothes wear off around your bottom, that is a sign of laziness.”
31
4: Conclusion
This paper has stressed the diversity of experiences of African smallholders with cotton in the
20th century. Rather than assuming a priori that public-private attempts to introduce cotton
were misguided and doomed to fail or result in oppression, I have shown that under specific
conditions, African smallholders were willing and able to adopt cotton, and that investments
into cultivation, marketing and transport contributed importantly to such instances. By from
the idea of a necessarily antagonistic relationship between (colonial) states and African rural
populations, I have allowed for the possibility that rural communities may benefit from
external intervention to build roads, introduce high-yielding food crop and cotton varieties, to
provide schooling and extension, and in general to help rural communities to move out of a
poverty trap. The failure of the (colonial) state in Africa can be described as insufficient
commitment to such intervention.
In the process, this paper has shown the merit of focusing on what distinguishes different
cases, rather than trying to capture them all under a collective experience of colonial
oppression. I have shown that ‘coercion’ meant very different things in different conditions,
that ‘labour bottlenecks’ almost universally present in savannah farming systems, but were
also much more severe in some places than in others. I have shown that marketing conditions
(distance to market, grower prices, ‘cheating’ and ‘coercion in marketing centres) were an
important factor that determined African smallholders’ willingness to grow cotton and that
while this was an issue in most settings, actual distances to market, levels of ‘cheating’ and
grower prices differed considerably from place to place. I have also shown that cotton was
grown for local textile markets, but that the scale of this cultivation was much smaller than the
scale of cultivation of export. In general, this study makes the case for a comparative
approach, focusing on the diversity of African experiences.
Finally, it should be stressed that the question if the introduction of cotton is good for longterm economic growth is important, but falls outside the scope of this paper. We may
conclude from examples in this study that cotton can be a stepping stone towards agricultural
commercialization and the rise of capitalist farming (Buganda), but also that it drives rural
economies into undesirable dependence on a single export crop and lack of economic
diversification (i.e. a commodity trap).
32
Appendix 1: Map of Africa
33
Appendix 2: Water-fed, low-input cotton suitability and maximum attainable yield
Cotton suitability (FAO GAEZ)
Cotton maximum attainable yield (FAO GAEZ)
34
Appendix 3: Tree crop suitability
Coffee suitability (FAO GAEZ)
Cocoa suitability (FAO GAEZ)
35
Appendix 4: Cotton production in Africa (1900-2010), in per capita terms
Cotton in sub-Saharan Africa: 14 Cases
25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
Sudan
Nigeria
Tanzania
Uganda
Zaire
Chad
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Ivory Coast
Mali
South Africa
Zimbabwe
Malawi
Mozambique
36
Appendix 5: Cotton production in per capita terms: four different cotton regimes
Colonial ' peasant revolutions'
Colonial irrigation schemes
10.0
10.0
1.0
1.0
0.1
0.1
0.0
0.0
Uganda
Zimbabwe
Malawi
Sudan
Colonial concession schemes
' Cotton revolutions' in
Francophone West Africa
2001-05
1991-95
1981-85
1971-75
0.01
1961-65
0.01
1951-55
0.1
1941-45
0.1
1931-35
1
1921-25
1
1911-15
10
1901-05
10
Zaire
Chad
Mozambique
Burkina Faso
37
Ivory Coast
Mali
Appendix 6 : Uganda’s two main farming systems and major cotton-producing regions
LANGO
TESO
BUSOGA
BUGANDA
Uganda’s ‘banana zones’ (main cotton producing zones superimposed)
Uganda’s ‘millet (i.e. savannah) zones’ (main cotton producing zones superimposed)
38
Appendix 7 Brief evaluation of other cases
Congo146
“We have failed to make the crop as popular here as in Uganda. The remuneration is inadequate
and the Blacks are growing the crop only under the pressure of the administration.”
Colonial officer 147
The case of cotton in northern and south-eastern Congo makes for an interesting comparison
with Uganda’s banana zones. Considering the fact that rainfall patterns are very similar, and
the fact that in both cases smallholders did not grow more lucrative tree crops, there is a need
to explain the two divergent paths.
I begin by stressing that Congolese ‘factor endowments’ diverge from Uganda in two
important ways. First, land had to be cleared of forest before cotton could be cultivated, which
made it an even more laborious crop. Second, population densities were very low in Congo,
which made transport and marketing an even greater challenge than it was in Uganda.
By assigning concessions to run the cotton sector, the Belgian administration tried to make
cotton work and they were really quite successful. Cotton quickly took off in the 1930s, and
from 1930 to 1960, the Congo was consistently the second largest rain-fed cotton producer in
sub-Saharan Africa, after Uganda.
A lot of forced labour was used to organize both production and transport. Prices paid to
growers were very low, much lower than in Uganda at first (half of the Ugandan prices on
average in the interwar period, according to my calculations based on the official exchange
rate. Perhaps better in the post-war period, but the data from Likaka are ambiguous).
The case of the Congo is interesting. Perhaps this was the most far-fetched attempt to realize a
sizeable cotton export sector “against all odds”. The Belgian colonial state was successful in
building up a cotton sector, but the low prices and “administrative pressure” exerted by the
Belgians created a lot of resentment in the Congolese countryside. No wonder the sector
completely collapsed in the 1960s and never rebounded.
146
Brixhe, (1953). Le Coton au Congo belge. Bruxelles, Jewsiewicki (1977). The Great Depression and the
Making of the Colonial Economic System in the Belgian Congo. African Economic History (4), 153-176,
Likaka (1997). Rural society and cotton in colonial Zaire
147
Likaka, Rural society and cotton, p. 89
39
Nigeria148
“The great drawback to the cultivation of cotton in Nigeria is the distance between the
plantations and the markets. [...] Transport accounts for the non-realization of the brilliant future
which had been predicted for cotton growing in Nigeria.”
Penzer (1920) Cotton in British West Africa149
The case of British colonial Nigeria is in many ways comparable to that of colonial
Francophone West Africa (FWA). The Northern Nigerian savannah has a short rainy season
and cotton had been grown for centuries to supply the local textile sector. Colonial hopes
were high, and the railroad to Kano was built in anticipation of a large cotton supply.
However, the colonial government never managed to realize substantial cotton exports.
Although the vibrant local textile sector has often been pinpointed as a key cause of the
failure of cotton in Northern Nigeria, I argue that, parallel to FWA, the far majority of
individual households were only tangentially involved in cotton production in the pre-colonial
period. The expansion of groundnut sales is also often cited as a reason for Nigeria’s cotton
failure. It is interesting indeed that Nigerian smallholders chose to commercially cultivate
groundnuts over cotton, probably because it requires much less labour and was therefore
much more compatible with food security objectives. At the same time, however, it should be
noted that in per capita terms Nigerian groundnut export were not all that impressive: the per
capita income from cash crop exports in Northern Nigeria was considerably lower than in the
savannah areas of Uganda.150
Although the BCGA and the Nigerian colonial administration desired to export cotton from
Northern Nigeria, they never managed to overcome problems of cultivation (low yields,
competition with food crops), marketing and transport (long distances to nearest ginnery) that
also prevailed in FWA. Unlike FWA, this situation did not change in the post-colonial period,
since no successful renewed investments were made to turn around the cotton sector.
“It was noted in 1938 that people in Uganda paid an average of six times more taxes than
people in Northern Nigeria, for at that time the Poll and Native Administration taxes in the
148
Helleiner (1966). Peasant agriculture, government, and economic growth in Nigeria, Hinds (1996)
“Colonial policy and Nigerian cotton exports, 1939-1951”The International Journal of African Historical
Studies (29): pp. 25-46, Hogendorn (1995) “The cotton campaign in Northern Nigeria, 1902-1914: An early
example of public/private planning failure in agriculture” in Isaacman and Roberts (eds) Cotton, colonialism and
social history in sub-Saharan Africa, Nonnenmacher and Onyeiwu (2005) ‘Illusion of a Cotton Paradise:
Explaining the Failure of the British Cotton Growing Association in Colonial Nigeria’, Journal of European
Economic History 34:1, Penzer (1920). Cotton in British West Africa including Togoland and the Cameroons. A
fascinating still movie (14 minutes) on cotton in Nigeria for a British cinema audience can be found here:
http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1322
149
Quoted in Nonnenmacher and Onyeiwu Illusion in cotton paradise, p. 132
150
Papaioannou and De Haas’ estimate the average annual per capita F.O.B. value of export crops (1920-39)
from Northern Nigeria at 0.8 pounds for Zaria, 0.6 pounds for Plateau, and between 0.3 and 0.0 pounds for all
other provinces. Corresponding estimates for Uganda are 1.5 pounds for Teso, 1.0 pounds for Lango and 0.5
pounds for Acholi (compared to approximately 1.5 pounds in Uganda’s banana areas). Papaioannou and De Haas
Climate shocks, cash crops and resilience.
40
Eastern Province amounted over 30 Shs. Per head.” (Kuhanen, p. 175 quoting Mitchell to the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, 15 March 1938, CO/536/197/4070/PRO)
Mozambique151
“Our discontent was based entirely on the harsh treatment at the hands of Chefe Costa [=the
administrator]. He forced us to destroy our fields containing corn and other food crops and to
substitute cotton which did not provide us with sufficient income to buy the food which we
could no longer cultivate. There was nothing to eat. When we complained he beat us and raped
our wives. So we rose up.”
Northern Mozambican peasant on the Zambezi Rebellion (1917-21)152
“State subsidies to concessionary companies could not compensate for the lack of even the
most rudimentary scientific information on which to plan the cotton system. Nor could they
make up for the absence of a transportation network or the unwillingness of the concessionary
companies to make any appreciable capital investments. Most firms remained content to
plunder the peasant living within the immediate vicinity of the handful of markets and
primitive ginning mills which they had constructed.” 153
The case of Mozambique is perhaps the most tragic one. Northern Mozambique has a short
rainy season, but it is (as most areas in southeastern Africa) relatively well-suited to cotton
(see Map, Appendix 2). If farmers had been provided with sufficient cultivation and
marketing support, cotton may have provided a road towards rural development. However, the
relatively “poor” Portuguese colonial administration tried cotton cultivation ‘on the cheap’
with an aim to supply cotton to Portugal’s textile sector below the world market price. Cotton
was implemented through concessionary companies with the help of collaborating chiefs, who
were mostly considered as illegitimate in the eyes of local populations. The lack of investment
was compensated by forced cultivation and ruthless coercion. Smallholders were forced to
grow specified amounts or acreages of cotton and severely punished by collaborating chiefs if
they did not comply. Despite coercion, the introduction of cotton was initially an outright
failure. Coercion could not compensate for the fact that smallholders were forced to grow
cotton on unsuitable soils, and markets were disorganized and very remote to most producers.
151
Isaacman, A. (1980). "Cotton is the mother of poverty": peasant resistance to forced cotton production in
Mozambique, 1938-1961, Isaacman (1985). Chiefs, Rural Differentiation and Peasant Protest: The Mozambican
Forced Cotton Regime 1938-1961. African Economic History(14), Isaacman and Chilundo “Peasants at work:
forced cotton cultivation in Northern Mozambique in Isaacman and Roberts (eds) Cotton, colonialism and social
history in sub-Saharan Africa, Pitcher “From coercion to incentives: the Portuguese colonial cotton regime in
Angola and Mozambique, 1946-1974” in Isaacman and Roberts (eds) Cotton, colonialism and social history in
sub-Saharan Africa
152
Isaacman, A. (1985). Chiefs, Rural Differentiation and Peasant Protest: The Mozambican Forced Cotton
Regime 1938-1961. African Economic History(14), p. 18
153
Isaacman, A. (1985). Chiefs, Rural Differentiation and Peasant Protest: The Mozambican Forced Cotton
Regime 1938-1961. African Economic History(14), p. 19
41
The quality of cotton was bad, yields low154 and prices insufficient even “to pay hut tax or to
purchase the clothes that had been made from the cotton [smallholders] had grown.”155
Interestingly however, when the Portuguese administration realized that its strategy was
failing, it began to invest more in cotton cultivation and marketing. Also, coercion was scald
back significantly. Smallholders who grew cotton were no longer forced to engage in other
forms of forced labour, surveys were conducted to establish the areas which were most
suitable for cotton cultivation, investments in transport were made, taxes were reduced, forced
acreages were reduced for vulnerable individuals (such as single women or old men), prices
were raised, African growers were allowed to organize in cooperatives and the best cultivators
were offered bonuses, medical and technical assistance were offered and high yielding
cassava, maize and peanuts seeds were distributed.”156 Still, in the 1950s, there continued to
be a lot of misery (famine) in the Mozambican countryside. Prices and yields remained too
low to incentivize smallholders.157 In the 1960s, the situation improved further for African
smallholders. Cotton collapsed in the 1970s, but has been slowly recovering from the 1980s
onwards.
Southern Rhodesia158
Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) has a suitable climate for rain-fed, low-input
cotton cultivation, but a short growing season. The Rhodesian state had an ambiguous interest
in cotton cultivation, One the one hand, some attempts were made to introduce the crop, on
the other hand attempts were made to divert African labour into the settler sector.
Smallholders themselves preferred to cultivate foodstuffs for the emerging European (settler
and export) market, which provided higher returns to labour than cotton cultivation. The
marketing infrastructure for cotton was also underdeveloped, until in 1936 the Cotton
Research and Industry Board (CRIB) was founded to distribute seeds, gin and sell cotton and
resolve a previously lacking organized marketing system. In general, state efforts to introduce
cotton were stepped up in the 1940s, when white farmers had moved away from cotton and
Afircan farmers were no longer seen as competition. Slowly, cotton began to attract more
interest from growers. A severe pest attack suppressed cultivation in the 1950s, but in the
1960s, smallholder cotton production increased so much that the era is referred to as a
‘peasant miracle’.159 The take-off levelled off in the 1970s but relatively high production
levels have been sustained up to today
154
At an average of 103 Kg/Ha, Mozambican cotton yields were about one third of those in Uganda’s savannah.
Pitcher, p. 131.
155
Pitcher “From coercion to incentives: the Portuguese colonial cotton regime in Angola and Mozambique,
1946-1974” in Isaacman and Roberts (eds) Cotton, colonialism and social history in sub-Saharan Africa, p. 128
156
Pitcher “From coercion to incentives, p. 130
157
In the 1950s, yields were still below those in Uganda, while grower prices were also 21 per cent lower than
those in Uganda. Pitcher, p. 134.
158
Nyambara (2000). Colonial Policy and Peasant Cotton Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia, 1904-1953. The
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 33(1), 81-111
159
Cf. Nyambara 2000
42
Malawi160
Malawi is a special case, because the Shire Valley was a highly suitable ecological niche for
cotton and provided smallholders with sufficient resources to be less concerned about their
food security. As a result, smallholders in the area required only relatively little
encouragement and support to cultivate cotton in the early colonial era.
160
Mandala (1990). Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in
Malawi,1859-1960, Mandala (1995) “We toiled for the white man”
43