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| Title: | Hegemony on a Shoestring: Indirect Rule and Access to Agricultural Land |
| Author: | Berry, Sara |
| Year: | 1992 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
| Volume: | 62 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 327-355 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Ghana Nigeria Kenya Zambia United Kingdom Africa |
| Subjects: | colonialism indirect rule colonial policy land customary law land law Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1159747 |
| Abstract: | This article looks at the early decades of British colonial rule in Africa. Scarcity of money and manpower not only obliged administrators to practise 'indirect rule' but also limited their ability to direct the course of political and social change. In effect, the author argues, colonial regimes were unable to impose either English laws and institutions or their own versions of 'traditional' African ones on to indigenous societies. Colonial 'inventions' of African tradition served not so much to define the shape of the colonial social order as to provoke a series of debates over the meaning and application of tradition which in turn shaped struggles over authority and access to resources. The article is organized in four sections. The first presents the general argument about the impact of colonial rule on conditions of access to agricultural resources. The second describes the kinds of debate which arose under indirect rule over the meaning and uses of 'custom', while the third and fourth illustrate their implications for the organization of native administration, and for changing conditions of access to land. Examples are drawn from rural areas in four British colonies - Nigeria, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Kenya and Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) - selected to reflect different histories of colonial domination and agricultural commercialization. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |
