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Initial Conditions and Agricultural Development in Zambia, 1915–2015

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Agricultural Development in the World Periphery

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

Abstract

Chapter 6 dealt with the case of Zambia, previously Northern Rhodesia, which has exhibited a remarkable consistency in the focus of its agricultural policies throughout the colonial and independence eras. Assessing the 100 year period from 1915, this study applies a political-economy framework to present evidence on the extent to which, and through what mechanisms, initial natural resource endowments have influenced state policies in Zambia, and how those policies have determined the state of the contemporary agricultural sector.

Hillbom conducted this research within the Marcus and Marianne Wallenberg funded project “Growing more unequal: Long-term trends in inequality in Africa ”. Both authors would like to thank participants in the session New Approaches in African Agricultural and Rural History at the African Economic History Meeting in Brighton in 2016 as well as colleagues Martin Andersson and Emelie Till for their comments on draft versions of this text.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In our study, we present natural resource endowments as an exogenous initial condition, but this is not the only assertion. Instead, the endogeneity of natural resources is a rising issue in the literature Willebald, Badia-Miró, Pinilla (2015).

  2. 2.

    The definition of settler colonies is contested. One dividing line is between the modern settler economies of the Neo-European type, e.g. USA and Australia, and the colonial territories that were under European political and military control but attracted limited numbers of settlers, e.g. Africa (Loyd & Metzer 2013). Fo r further diversity within the African context, one approach is the recognition of major shifts in the ratio of settlers to natives (in both directions), but then bearing in mind that settler–native ratios change over time. Another approach is estimating the settler communities’ influence on colonial poli tics (Frankema, Green, & Hillbom, 2016).

  3. 3.

    The same caution goes for Fig. 6.4 and the statistics on hectares under maize production.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economic History, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Ellen Hillbom & Samuel Jenkin

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  1. Ellen Hillbom
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  1. Department of Applied Economics and Economic History, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Vicente Pinilla

  2. Department of Economics, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Henry Willebald

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Hillbom, E., Jenkin, S. (2018). Initial Conditions and Agricultural Development in Zambia, 1915–2015. In: Pinilla, V., Willebald, H. (eds) Agricultural Development in the World Periphery. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66020-2_6

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