Category: Colonialism

The labor of land

ramasalladieng1 Comment

Contemporary  and agricultural investments have generated huge attention. The transformations in land tenure, production and social reproduction in the aftermath of land rushes have generated a  . A central question is about , and its implications for structural transformation and .

Extraversion, exports and the labor question

In Senegambia, the intersecting pressures of food, land, and capital were historically linked to the quest for new labor and cash crops (cotton, then groundnut, followed by fresh fruits and vegetables) in frontier markets for Europe. Some of these transformations have been widely documented by Egyptian economist , Senegalese historian  and American historian . In 1819, the Ndiaw Treaty between France and the leaders of the Waalo Kingdom (in northern Senegal) was signed, allowing France to . This agricultural colonization project failed mostly because of the resistance of the inhabitants of the Waalo Kingdom (the Waalo-Waalo) and the inability of  French colonial leaders to secure land concessions they thought were automatically and permanently transferred to them through the treaty. The Waalo leaders, who managed the land on behalf of their community, understood otherwise. This conflicting interpretation on how land is governed became a recurrent source of conflict.

Another problem was the shortage of labor鈥攖he Waalo-Waalo refused forced labor and preferred to cultivate their subsistence crops rather than those for export. This refusal led to the return of clandestine slave trade and related abuses. The insecurity created by Waalo鈥檚 neighbors and the resistance of merchant capital added to the failure. These are key to understanding how various historical dynamics have sedimented to make the Senegal River Valley Region (historical Waalo) the site of the land rush that began in 2007-2008, especially for the production of export fresh fruits and vegetables.

Revisiting this rich history offers us a better understanding of relations of exploitation and contemporary resistance to  by a number of communities in this region. It is a reminder of the violence of primitive accumulation, a violence that is ongoing. Tanzanian historian  puts it well:

The early encounter of Africa with Europe was not commercial involving the exchange of commodities, but rather the unilateral looting of human resources. African slavery was neither a trade, nor a mode of production. It was simply a robbery of a people on a continental scale perpetrated over four centuries through force of arms.

Despite the subsequent attempt to develop new crops in 1826 in Saint-Louis, merchant capital eventually prevailed with the failure of agriculture. As a result, post-colonial leaders 鈥渋nherited a country organized by and for merchant capital鈥� after 1960 as  puts it. In the same vein,  note how merchant capital subsequently established colonial and post-colonial structures of extraction.

Beyond processes of land acquisition, it is important to pay attention to how land becomes capital and how agricultural workers are included, excluded, or rather  into these agri-food networks.For instance, in her 2011  on land grabbing in Southern Africa, Ruth Hall provides a useful typology of agricultural transformations from subsistence to capitalist imperatives. Besides models that are based on the displacement of primary producers and the establishment of large export-oriented agricultural estates, Hall emphasizes 鈥渃ommercialization in situ鈥� and 鈥渙utgrower鈥� schemes whereby petty commodity producers and other land users are incorporated into commercial value chains. This is a further invite to go beyond  in our analyses of the genealogy of  and of processes of exploitation.

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Marx and Colonialism

luguangmingLeave a comment

It is widely believed that Marx did not systematically consider the role of colonialism within the process of capital accumulation. According to聽, Marx concentrated on a self-closed national economy in his main work. Although he did mention colonialism in Part 8 of聽Capital聽Volume 1 on the so-called primitive accumulation, this would only belong to a pre-history of capital, not to its everyday development. Based on a similar assumption, some postcolonial scholars criticise Marx for being Eurocentric, even a complicit supporter of Western imperialism, who ignored the agency of non-Western people.

If we read some  we could think that they are right. How can we explain otherwise Marx and Engels praising the role of the bourgeoisie drawing even the most barbarian nations into civilisation or the view that the liberation of colonised peoples depended on the victory of the revolution in Europe?

Before I start, let me make a short premise. In my first book I read Marx鈥檚 Capital in the light of his writings and articles on Ireland, China, India, Russia, and the American Civil War. At the time I believed that Marx only published a significant, but still limited amount of writings on the colonial question, those available in the Collected Works and in collections like Marx & Colonialism. But then in 2007 I worked at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, contributing to the complete edition of Marx鈥檚 and Engels鈥檚 writings. I thus 鈥渄iscovered鈥� some of Marx鈥檚 20,000 print page long notebooks (just to give you an idea, the printed notebooks alone would look like a new Collected Works). These writings show that Marx was interested in colonialism all his life, including when he wrote the Manifesto.

What came out of my reading? Let me start with the question of Marx鈥檚 field of analysis in聽Capital聽Volume 1. To analyse capital reproduction 鈥榠n its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary circumstances鈥�, Marx treats the world of commerce as one nation (1976: 727) and presupposes the full worldwide imposition of the capitalist mode of production. Does this mean that Marx analysed a 鈥渟elf-enclosed national economy鈥� as Harvey and others believe? In my view, this abstraction means exactly the opposite. Marx鈥檚 positing a coincidence between the national and global levels is a premise for conceptualising the world market, which includes both internal and foreign markets of all nations participating in it. This abstraction makes it possible to include expansionism into the analysis of capital accumulation. In this framework, a country鈥檚 economic system is not confined within its national borders but consists of all production branches where capital is freely transferable, including the colonies and dependent economies.

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The Malformation of West Africa

Abel B.S. Gaiya1 Comment

In 1927, Ladipo Solanke 鈥� co-founder of the West African Students Union (WASU) 鈥� published a book in which he argued that 鈥淚t took the white race a thousand years to arrive at their present level of advance: it took the Japanese, a Mongol race, 50 years to catch up with the white race, there is no reason why we West Africans, a Negro race, should not catch up with the Aryans and the Mongols in one quarter of a century.鈥� (Solanke, 1927: 58). All that would be needed to achieve this, for Solanke, would be 鈥渁 strong self-determination to take up and money to back up,鈥� as well as active cooperation among West Africans. Sir Henry J. Lightfoot-Boston, in an article titled Fifty Years Hence, prophesied a federation of West African territories by 1976 (Boahen, 1982: 40).

The fulfilment of such grand visions has continued to elude the region for decades. West Africans, and indeed many from outside the region, have not only underestimated the difficulty of development in general and in the region in particular, but have understated how crucial it is to examine the difficulties within a regional framework.

Developmental and Regional Difficulties

In the case of the former, the worldwide development experience since the 1960s and the multitude of crises in West Africa have demonstrated that development and stability are not merely matters of 鈥減olitical will鈥� or 鈥渟trong self-determination鈥�. Particularly for West Africa, there is a reason why the great empires and societies of the interior (the Western Sudan) which had the highest levels of integration with the rest of the world, elite Arabo-literacy rates and the largest empires in the pre-Atlantic period now rank the highest in poverty rates and the lowest in economic production, anglo-literacy rates, and many other measures of human development.

There is a reason why West Africa had the highest incidence of military coups in Africa following political independence (McGowan, 2003: 355); why the region is a major center of diffusive terrorism on the continent; and why it is experiencing a current climate of violence between farmers and pastoralists that is 鈥渦nprecedented in modern times鈥� (Brottem, 2021: 2). There is a reason why West Africa, along with Central Africa, has the highest transport costs and lowest transport quality in a continent which has the highest transport costs in the world (Teravaninthorn and Raballand, 2009: 17).

There is a reason why, according to the latest attempt to quantify political settlements of developing countries (Schulz and Kelsall, 2020), West Africa ranks the lowest in Africa in terms of virtually all the variables identified by Whitfield et al. (2015) as critical for industrial policy success. Yet presidential elections and development discourse within nations in West Africa continue to be dominated by simplistic narratives of 鈥済ood governance鈥�, 鈥渃orruption鈥� and 鈥減olitical will鈥�.

With regard to understating the importance of adopting a regional lens, this has been the case since the late colonial period when self-government began to be extended to the colonies on a territorial rather than regional basis. The movements for West African cooperation fostered by the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), its eventual rival, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and student organizations such as the West African Students Union (WASU) and the F茅d茅ration des 茅tudiants d’Afrique noire en France (FEANF) (Black African Students Federation in France) went into decline in West Africa as nationalist territorialism spread across the region in response to the expanded opportunities for legislative engagement which followed colonial acquiescence to some degree of self-rule (Boahen, 1982: 15). Efforts at creating regional federations, as pre-eminently envisaged by Kwame Nkrumah, did not succeed, and faded away after the fall of Nkrumah in 1966 (Serra, 2014: 21-22). Since then, 鈥淎lthough rhetorical support for integration exists, there is no dominant personality to articulate a vision and turn it into a crusade the way Nkrumah once did.鈥� (Lavergne and Daddieh, 1997: 105). There is also an absence of an 鈥渋ntegration culture鈥� in the region, among governments, business communities and ordinary people (Bundu, 1997: 38).

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The colonial geographies of Kenya鈥檚 fintech boom

Nick BernardsLeave a comment

Digital and mobile finance applications have boomed in Kenya over the last decade. Mobile money, Vodafone鈥檚 M-Pesa system in particular, is ubiquitous. Kenyan banks and smaller start-ups have led the adoption of a wider range of mobile and digital financial applications.

For promoters of fintech as a tool for development, Kenya is a paradigm case. from Tavneet Suri and William Jack 鈥� suggesting that the advent of M-Pesa had directly moved 194 000 households, equivalent to 2 percent of the country, out of extreme poverty 鈥� have been triumphantly cited across a wide range of and policy documents. The rapid adoption of mobile and digital finance, according to advocates, has allowed Kenya to 鈥樷�� the developmental constraints of its existing financial system. In the words of : 鈥榥ew technologies solve problems arising from weak institutional infrastructure and the cost structure of conventional banking鈥�.

There are good reasons to question this rosy narrative, as recent critics have demonstrated compellingly. Among others, raise a number of important methodological and other objections to Suri and Jack鈥檚 claims, and shows how narratives of 鈥榠nclusion鈥� mask the perpetuation of gendered patterns of exclusion and inequality. Wider applications of fintech in Kenya have come in for critique as well. highlight emerging patterns of digitally-enabled over-indebtedness. trace the emergence of monopolistic corporate power enacted through the extension of digital platforms (including for finance) in Kenyan agriculture. show the emergence of new forms of racialized dispossession and exploitation through efforts to extend fintech applications to refugees in Kenya.

On a more basic level, 鈥榣eapfrogging鈥� narratives have to contend with the fact that the geography of Kenyan fintech looks a lot like that of the financial system more generally. The fintech boom is predominantly an urban phenomenon, and especially concentrated in Mombasa and in and around Nairobi. Data from the 2019 national 鈥樷�� survey shows that 6.6 percent of respondents currently or had previously used of mobile lending services, and 6.4 percent reported the same of digital lending apps. The corresponding figures among urban residents were 17.2 and 11.4 percent. The proportion of residents in Nairobi Metropolitan Area and Mombasa using mobile money services (25 percent) and digital lending apps (18.2 percent) is more than double the respective use rates of mobile (12.3 percent) and digital borrowing (7.1 percent) among urban residents elsewhere.

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聽A People鈥檚 Green New Deal: A Symposium

黑料社区1 Comment

Max Ajl鈥檚聽A People鈥檚 Green New Deal聽intervenes in current debates regarding green planning, green future, green stimuli, and eco-socialism. It surveys a wide range of existing literature on the ecological and social crisis, ranging from ruling-class 鈥済reat transitions,鈥� to eco-modernist聽elixirs聽of聽the聽right and聽the聽left which bank on technological solutions to today鈥檚 social and ecological problems. It then considers and聽critiques an array of liberal, left-liberal, and social democratic proposals, some of them going under the eco-socialist moniker, and shows how they rest on continued exploitation and primitive accumulation of the periphery.听

A People鈥檚 Green New Deal contributions lie in, first, using frameworks of dependency theory, accumulation on a world scale, and ecologically uneven exchange to illuminate the costs and consequences of distinct approaches to the climate crisis, left and right. Second, the book鈥檚 emphasis on agriculture, land use, and agro-ecology makes it unique amongst books on the Green New Deal and parallel debates. Its emphasis on decolonization, national sovereignty, anti-imperialism, and climate debt repayments from the North to the South is a third contribution. A fourth is how it deals with technology. 

This review forum assesses the contribution of聽A People鈥檚 Green New Deal.听Sakshi 蝉颈迟耻补迟别蝉听APGND聽in terms of a counter-epistemology to Eurocentric and empire-blind resolutions, if not really solutions, to the social and ecological crises to which mainstream Green New Deals are addressed.听Sheetal Chhabria 补蝉蝉别蝉蝉别蝉听APGND鈥檚 contribution to thinking on a planetary scale about appropriate planning for a just transition, while criticizing the book鈥檚 uncritical embrace of certain Indian nationalist tropes. G眉ney I艧谋kara raises questions regarding political agency and organization, the role of national-level planning in any form of national-level green transition, and how to approach anti-imperialism on a world scale.听聽

Read the contributions:

Dismantling and transcending colonialism鈥檚 legacy

jotadesinaLeave a comment

In 鈥渄ecolonial鈥� discourse, the African leadership landscape is flattened to the point of becoming a caricature. In an earlier variation of this caricature, Kwame Nkrumah鈥檚 injunction of 鈥渟eek ye first the political kingdom鈥� was presented by political scientist  as a deficient obsession with political power to the neglect of the economic. In the , the neglect of epistemic 鈥渄ecoloniality鈥� is characterized as the deficient underbelly of the 鈥渘ationalist鈥� movement.

Kwame Nkrumah, S茅dar Senghor, and Julius Nyerere are not only three of the most cerebral figures of Africa鈥檚 鈥渘ationalist鈥� movement, but unlike Amilcar Cabral they lived to lead their countries in the aftermath of formal colonial rule.

Contrary declarations notwithstanding, Senghor, Nkrumah, and Nyerere were acutely aware of the colonial epistemological project and the need to transcend it. Indeed, philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne鈥檚  of Negritude as epistemology argued that its salience lies in the dissolution of the binary opposition of subject and object in the logic of Ren茅 Descartes. Whatever one鈥檚 take on the specificity of Senghor鈥檚 claims of Africa鈥檚 modes of knowing鈥攂y insisting on the interconnectedness of subject and object鈥攈e deliberately sought to mark out what is deficient in modern European epistemology and valorize African systems of knowledge. This epistemological project is built on a distinct African ontological premise.

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National Fiscal Redistribution as 鈥淚nternational鈥� Development Assistance

Abel B.S. Gaiya2 Comments

The histories of international development and foreign aid often focus on aid between independent nations. Williams鈥� (2013: 234) history of international development aid only begins from the British Colonial Development Act of 1929. Markovits, Strange and Tingley鈥檚 (2019) history of foreign aid focuses on aid between 鈥渘ations鈥� or empires. Helleiner (2014), for instance, traces the origins of multilateral development finance proposals to China鈥檚 Sun Yat-sen in 1919.

There is, however, a major problem with these histories. Their starting points reveal a methodological nationalist approach. The history of states and societies since the modern era, is however more complex. The early modern era is well known for the spate of state consolidations and national formations. It may be argued that intra-national transfers within modernizing nations may represent important forms of regional development assistance that have been left out of the consideration of the history of development assistance.

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The Changing Face of Imperialism: Colonialism to Contemporary Capitalism

sunandasenLeave a comment

叠测听Sunanda Sen and

How is imperialism relevant today? How has it mutated over the past century? What are different theoretical and empirical angles through which we can study imperialism? These are the questions we deal with in our edited volume on (2018).

We understand imperialism as a continuing arrangement since the early years of empire-colonies to the prevailing pattern of expropriations, on part of those who wield power vis-脿-vis those who are weak. The pattern of 鈥榦ld imperialism鈥�, in the writings of Hobson, Hilferding and Lenin, were framed in the context of the imperial relations between the ruling nations and their colonies with political subjugation of the latter, captured by force or by commerce, providing the groundwork for their economic domination in the interest of the ruling nations. Forms of such arrogation varied, across regions and over time; including  the early European invasions of South America, use of slaves or indentured labour across oceans, and the draining off of surpluses from colonies by using trade and financial channels. Imperialism, however, has considerably changed its pattern since then, especially with institutional changes in the  prevailing power structure.

The essays in the volume offer a renewed interpretation, which include the alternate interpretations of imperialism and its changing pattern over space and time, incorporating the changing pattern of oppression which reflects the dynamics underlying the specific  patterns of oppression. The pattern can be characterised as 鈥榥ew imperialism鈥� under contemporary capitalism as distinct from its 鈥榦ld鈥� form under colonialism. The varied interpretations of imperialism  as in the literature do not lessen the significance of the common ground underlying the alternate positions, including the diverse pattern of expropriations under imperialism.

The volume offers fourteen chapters by renowned authors. In this blog, we organise them in the following manner: the first five of those deal with the conceptual basis of imperialism from different angles, the next three chapters deal with contemporary imperialism, and then the rest six chapters of book deal with India, colonialism and contemporary issues with imperialism.

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