Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/242658 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
African Economic History Working Paper Series No. 29/2016
Publisher: 
African Economic History Network (AEHN), s.l.
Abstract: 
In this paper I use primary and secondary sources to quantify the role of tenant labour on settler farms in colonial Africa, using Southern Rhodesia as a case in point. My findings show that the rise of wage labour did not mark the end of labour tenancy, as has been assumed in previous literature. On the contrary, the two forms of labour co-existed. The results find support in the theoretical literature on agrarian labour contracts as well as from studies on farm labour on large farms in pre-industrial Europe and America. This literature has been surprisingly neglected in studies of rural labour relations in colonial Africa. Based on my estimates I revise the fundamental question of the role of access to and control of indigenous labour in the growth of European settler agriculture in Africa. In contrast to previous research, I argue that the rise of wage labour was a response to settler farmers' limited capacity to control tenant labour rather than a sign of the superiority of agrarian capitalist relations of production.
Subjects: 
Settler agriculture
Africa
labour
Southern Rhodesia
JEL: 
N17
N27
N37
N47
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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