Coercive Development: Land Shortage, Forced Labor, and Colonial Development in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1938-1946

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Periodical article

Title:	Coercive Development: Land Shortage, Forced Labor, and Colonial Development in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1938-1946
Author:	Bessant, Leonard L.
Year:	1992
Periodical:	International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:	25
Issue:	1
Pages:	39-65
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zimbabwe
Subjects:	colonial policy land land scarcity communal lands History and Exploration Labor and Employment colonialism Development and Technology
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/220144
Abstract:	This essay is a case study of how Native Affairs Department (NAD) officers and Chiweshe peasant families in colonial Zimbabwe saw land shortage and the colonial development policies that were supposed to remedy the shortage between 1938 and 1946. The NAD planned first to take direct control of land allocation in the Chiweshe Reserve (now the Chiweshe Communal Area), thereby restoring a basic equity among families. Officers would then use the restriction on acreages as a lever to make families adopt intensive farming methods. Finally, the NAD would build soil conservation measures in the reserve. Coercion was a standard method of implementing these policies. Two questions are addressed in the essay. Firts, how did Chiweshe families think about land shortage, intensive farming, and soil conservation in the 1940s? Second, what can Chiweshe families' actions tell about peasants' 'passive' resistance? Notes, ref.