The concept of "development" is one of the lasting legacies of the late colonial era in Africa. Taking Sukumaland in Tanzania as a reference, this book explores British colonial ideas about rural "development" and examines the results of their application after 1945. Colonial attempts to change African systems of agriculture are discussed extensively and critically assessed. Other issues like the exploitative character of British colonial development policy in the postwar period, the role of cooperatives, and the connection between development policy and decolonisation are also addressed. This book is the published version of author Rohland Schuknecht's doctoral thesis.

The first comprehensive and fully documented history of modern Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania).

Tanzania in the 1970s was at the forefront of policy innovation. Near-universal primary education, access to health services and supplies of clean water subsequently became mainstream ambitions in Africa and elsewhere. But its policies towards agricultural and industrial production failed and left the country in a particularly weak position when it faced the demands of structural adjustment in the 1980s. This book, originally published in 1982, has been reissued with a new introduction which brings its themes up to the present, when income from gold mining and natural gas is making Tanzania one of the most dynamic economies in Africa today. The author, first an economic civil servant in Tanzania, later an academic at the University of Dar es Salaam, was in a unique position to write it, drawing on his own experiences as well as the plethora of ideas and debates in Dar es Salaam in the 1970s. The book has stood the test of time not only because of the range of material it covers but more profoundly because of the approach it takes to the work of Tanzania's founding president, Julius Nyerere - sympathetic to his ideas, deeply critical of failures in implementation. 25 short easily-read chapters take the story of Tanzania from pre-colonial times to the present, and show how Nyerere was hemmed in by what he inherited from the German and British colonialists who ran the country up to Independence in 1961. It provides an invaluable introduction to anyone coming to the country for the first time, and offers a profound assessment of the theoretical debates that have made Tanzania of such interest to students of development.

Farming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history. In his conclusion, Isaria N. Kimambo, a founding father of Tanzanian history, reflects on the efforts of successive historians to strike a balance between external causes of change and local initiative in their interpretations of Tanzanian history. He shows that nationalist and Marxist historians of Tanzanian history, understandably preoccupied through the first quarter-century of the country’s post-colonial history with the impact of imperialism and capitalism on East Africa, tended to overlook the initiatives taken by rural societies to transform themselves. Yet there is good reason for historians to think about the causes of change and innovation in the rural communities of Tanzania, because farming and pastoral people have constantly changed as they adjusted to shifting environmental conditions.

This book investigates development in British, French and Portuguese colonial Africa during the last decades of colonial rule. During this period, development became the central concept underpinning the relationship between metropolitan Europe and colonial Africa. Combining historiographical accounts with analyses from other academic viewpoints, this book investigates a range of contexts, from agriculture to mass media. With its focus on the conceptual side of development and its broad geographical scope, it offers new and unique perspectives. An extensive introduction contextualises the individual chapters and makes the book an up-to-date point of entry into the subject of colonial development, not only for a specialist readership, but also for students of history, development and postcolonial studies. Written by scholars from Africa, Europe and North America, Developing Africa is a uniquely international dialogue on this vital chapter of twentieth-century transnational history.

"From its modest beginnings in the 1860s, Dar es Salaam has grown to become one of Africa's most important urban centres. A major political, economic and cultural hub, the city has also acted as a crucible of local social and cultural innovation, exerting a powerful influence on wider Tanzanian society. Reflecting important contemporary socio-economic trends of urban Africa, it has recently attracted the attention of a diverse range of scholars from several disciplines. This collection draws on the best of this scholarship." --Book Jacket.

A compelling exploration of one of the most ill-advised and calamitous interventions in colonial development history.