Mhando, Hellen P.2021-10-182021-10-181977Hellen P. Mhando (1977) Capitalist penetration and the growth of peasant agriculture in Korogwe district 1920 – 1975. Master Disertation. University of Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaamhttp://41.86.178.5:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/16156Available in print form, East Africana Collection ,Dr.Wilbert Chagula Library,Class mark (THS HIS HD2135.K6M45)The idea of carrying out this study stemmed from reading similar studies in other areas. Beckford’s study for example on the plantation societies of West Indies revealed similar economic problems like those in Korogwe district. However the main incentive was Dr. Iliffe’s pamphlet, Agricultural Change in Modern Tanganyika. In his paper Dr. Iliffe’s was concerned with Tanzania’s contemporary development problems in historical perspectives, and he tried to suggest ways of thinking about them. He argued that by the period of the Second World War Tanganyika had become structurally underdeveloped, and this showed itself first in the dependence of the country’s economy upon external control, and secondly by a pattern of regional inequality inside the country which by this period had become relatively fixed and rigid. In his analysis of regional differentiation he distinguished three types of economic regions in the country: firstly there were the export commodities producing areas and these included areas of such estates like tea and sisal, peasant and cash crop areas, and the town. Secondly there were the foods producing areas, particularly those which surrounded the export commodities producing areas and supplied food to the estates. The third zone is what he called the peripheries, those areas which supplied migrant laborers to the estates. Of these categories, Korogwe district belonged to the first and the second types, that is, it was both an export commodity producing areas and at the same time it was a food producing area for the estate and the towns. One feature of korogwe district is the large number of town—settlements as compared to other districts in the region. Some of these grew up during the pre-colonial trade period and some developed after the establishment of the Tanganyika-Moshi railway line. Thus, besides producing for the plantation sector, a lot of trade in food-crops has been going on in these town settlements which encouraged people to grow more than they needed for their own subsistence - requirements. The population of the sisal estate areas was prevented from adopting sisal cultivation by the need for expensive machinery. These areas instead specialized in producing food for the estates and the town. In Korogwe district, production of export crops was not limited in the plantation sector. When the Germans established plantations in the lowland areas, much of the highland zone was opened for coffee production, and later on after independence tea and cardamom were also introduced on small holder basis, however this does not mean that the highland areas were kept free from plantation agriculture. When the British took over the administration of Tanganyika, they took advantage for cool climatic conditions and thus established tea estates as early as 1928. Thus one of the hypotheses I am working with in this study is under colonial rule the area around the plantations was mostly for food production for the plantation sector while laborers for the plantations had to come from other parts of the country. In other words. Every section of society had to be integrated in the money economy; thus if an area did not supply labor to the plantation sector or grow cash crops for export, it tended to grow food for these sectors ant the towns. As mentioned above the people in this district were not only food producers for the plantations; some areas were producing cash crops in spite of the large demand for labor in plantations. Thus this is a study mostly about peasant production in areas where any expansion of land was limited by the presence of European tea and sisal plantations. Studies done in the West Indies and other societies with a plantation economy have revealed that the restriction of peasant economy by the plantations is a constant source of political conflict and tension in these areas. Thus it is for great interest in this study to see the extent of this peasant – plantation conflicts expressed at the political level. Many studies have also revealed that the establishment of plantation has always resulted in the social demotions of the indigenous cultivator to a landless worker who lives in complete dependence on the plantation. Thus this is one of the other hypotheses which form the basis of this study. That is the influence of plantation economy on the lives of the indigenous cultivators. This is based on the general understanding that “plantations normally exercise excessive and adverse influence on land distribution and use and everywhere they occupy the best lands and push peasants on to marginal hillsides in the process and the consequence is almost always fragmentation and low living standards for the peasants. Some of the studies which have been done about the plantation economy in Tanga Region (Korogwe being one of the districts) have shown how sisal production has been an almost exclusively agricultural system, not only in Tanga Region but in whole of Tanganyika economy. Other studies have also attempted to show how colonialist tried to solve the problem of labor through a migrant labor system. The exploitative condition of work found in the plantation was a great source of many strikes by the plantation workers. My study attempts to go beyond the “plantations camps” and try to see how these workers tried to struggle against the pauperization process in plantation – work by talking up land where it was available, and thus becoming peasant producers. One other study which has influenced me in trying to analyse the economic problems of Korogwe district is the one done on Lushoto district was less influenced by Cliffe and Luttrel. The two districts reveal similar development problems, but there are also differences because Lushoto district was less influenced by plantation production than was Korogwe district. In Lushoto district peasant production has been the predominant feature while in Korogwe district the plantation economy and peasant production stand side by side. Thus capitalism penetrated differently in the two areas. However the tendency in both districts has been the growth of peasant production for the market, and the process of class formation taking place among peasant. Therefore the care of this study is to try to look at peasant production as the main alternative to wage employment in the plantations. This is an agreement with what myint say about the importance of peasant producers that peasant – families combining the roles of consumers and producers are the basic units of the subsistence economy and they are therefore of central importance in studying the impacts of outside economic forces. In spite of the foat that much of the foreign investment in the underdeveloped world goes to the plantation and mining sectors, yet the peasant sector has been growing. I am therefore interested in the way capitalism penetrated in District and the way it was used to draw the indigenous people into the cash economy, and to look into the role played by the peasants, the alternatives opened to them and their response to such situations. I hope that this analysis will help to draw some general conclusions about the process of development and underdevelopment in Korogwe district. The first chapter gives a theoretical framework for the whole study. Its focus is mainly on the penetration of capitalism in the peripheries as a direct result of Capitalist needs for more profit. The chapter goes on to explain how capitalism penetrated. Tanganyika in particular, and the consequence of such integration into the capitalist-system It gives a framework of how Korogwe districts as a plantation-peasant society” fits in the structure of colonial economy. The emphasis of the second chapter is on the pre-colonial society emphasizing that the people were developing independently until the external forces of capitalism were imposed on their production and distribution activities, first in the forge of 19th century trade and then under formal colonial rule. The third chapter attempts to show how colonial economy was growing through the techniques which the British enforced in order to bring the people into the capitalist system. It goes on to analyse the consequence of such processes. The fourth chapter exposes some of the contradictions which occurred after the peasants in Korogwe districts had been brought under the capitalist demands, particularly during the Second World War which brought about increased demand of crop sale. Some of the responses offered by the peasant are also explained in this chapter. The last chapter is an analysis of the economy after independence. It explains how by 1961 the colonialist had already set up a system of exploitation which offered a great challenge to the new Government which was faced with a duty to remove the economic imbalance created by colonialism. Much of the work on this paper is based on the material collected from Tanzania National Archives and field work conducted between December, 1975 and mid-march 1976. Some of the information was obtained from Korogwe Labor Office, offices of “Ujamaa na Ushirika, (Korogwe), Offices of the Tanga Region C0-operative Union, (Tanga) and offices of the Tanganyika Sisal C0-opetive Union, (Tanga) and four Sisal estates in Korogwe District. A few days of the field work were spent in trying to make a deeper case study of two villages in the district to help in making conclusions THS EAF HD2135.K6M45enKorogweTanzania (district)Economic conditionsEconomic history20th centuryAgricultureTanzaniaThesis