Abstract
There is no agreed definition of peasants among the academic community. Some define them as people who live from hand to mouth with minimal access to strategic resources. What is common among scholars is a recognition that peasants are largely uneducated, marginal and exist outside the formal structures of the state. It has been difficult to capture them within the superstructure of any nation-state. However, there is a lot of evidence that peasants are not as helpless as many have conceptualized. This chapter examines the peasantry with to demonstrate that this group is coherent, conscious and articulate, and has played a significant role in the political liberation of African countries. I argue that this group has held Africa’s economies together through paying taxes and by mobilizing forces of resistance against colonial rule.
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Notes
- 1.
Goran Hydén, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
- 2.
Goran Hydén, ibid., 102–103.
- 3.
Apollo Njonjo, “The Kenya peasantry: a re-assessment.” Review of African Political Economy 8, no. 20 (1981): 27–40.
- 4.
Mukaru Ng’ang’a, “What is happening to the Kenyan peasantry?” Review of African political economy 8, no. 20 (1981): 7–16.
- 5.
Wilks Amanor and Esi Dede, “Land, labour and gendered livelihoods in a ‘peasant’ and a ‘settler’ economy.” Feminist Africa 12, no. 2 (2009): 31–50.
- 6.
Ayang Nyong’o, “The development of a middle peasantry in Nyanza.” Review of African Political Economy 8, no. 20 (1981): 108–120.
- 7.
Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. Vol. 93. New York: Penguin, 1967.
- 8.
Shanin Teodor, ed, Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings. New York: Blackwell, 1987.
- 9.
Bundy Colin, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry. London: Heinemann, 1979.
- 10.
Henry Bernstein, “African peasantries: A theoretical framework.”.
- 11.
Bernstein, ibid., 440.
- 12.
John Iliffe, “The organization of the Maji Maji rebellion.” The Journal of African History 8, no. 03 (1967): 495–512.
- 13.
Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: The White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
- 14.
Molefi Kete Asante, The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony. New York: Routledge Publishers, 2015.
- 15.
Terrence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
- 16.
Moses Ochonu, “African Colonial Economies: State Control, Peasant Maneuvers, and Unintended Outcomes.” History Compass 11, no. 1 (2013): 1–13.
- 17.
Allen Isaacman, “Peasants and rural social protest in Africa.” African Studies Review 33, no. 02 (1990): 1–120.
- 18.
Norma Kriger, “The Zimbabwean war of liberation: struggles within the struggle.” Journal of Southern African Studies 14, no. 2 (1988): 304–322.
- 19.
Gorge Dalton, “The development of subsistence and peasant economies in Africa.” International Social Science Journal 16, no. 3 (1964).
- 20.
Helen Bradford, “Women, gender and colonialism: Rethinking the history of the British cape colony and its frontier zones, c. 1806–70.” The Journal of African History 37, no. 03 (1996): 351–370.
- 21.
Jack Lewis, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry: A Critique. Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1983.
- 22.
Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1965–63. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1993.
- 23.
David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty war in Kenya and the end of Empire. London: Orion Press, 2015.
- 24.
Lloyd Fallers, “Are African Cultivators to Be Called “Peasants”?” Current Anthropology 2, no. 2 (1961): 108–110.
- 25.
Jun Borsas, Jun Critical perspectives on rural politics and development formation and stratification of peasantry in colonial Ghana. Journal of Peasant studies 6, no. 1 (1980): 201–225.
- 26.
Marie Perinbam, Fanon and the Revolutionary Peasantry: The case of Algeria. Journal of Modern Africa Studies 11, no. 3 (1973): 427–445.
- 27.
Peter Knauss, Algerian Agrarian Revolution: Peasant Control or control of Peasants. African Studies Review 20 no. 3 (1977):65–78.
- 28.
David W. Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau: East African Studies. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987.
- 29.
Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspectives: East African Studies. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1989.
- 30.
Terence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
- 31.
Knox Chitiyo, and Martin Rupiya, “Tracking Zimbabwe’s political history: the Zimbabwe Defence Force from 1980–2005”. In Evolutions and Revolution: A Contemporary History of Militaries in Southern Africa. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2005.
- 32.
John Makumbe, The impact of democracy in Zimbabwe: assessing political, social and economic developments since the dawn of democracy. Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg: W.K. Kellog Foundation, 2009.
- 33.
Sam Moyo, Land reform and structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe: Land use Change in the Mashonaland Provinces. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitut, 2000.
- 34.
Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspectives: East African Studies. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1989.
- 35.
Moyo, ibid., 72–74.
- 36.
The impact of democracy in Zimbabwe: assessing political, social and economic developments since the dawn of democracy, pp. 10–11. Mamdani, Mahmood, “Extreme but not exceptional: towards an analysis of the agrarian question in…”.
- 37.
Clifton Crais, Poverty, War, and Violence in South Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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Throup, David W. 1987. Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau: East African Studies. Athens: Ohio University Press.
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Hamasi, L. (2018). The Peasantry and Politics in Africa. In: Oloruntoba, S., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Politics, Governance and Development. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95232-8_24
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