Economic Change and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa. Edited by Jennifer A. Widner. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. 307p. $16.95.

The crossroads of nationalist historiographies in sub-Saharan Africa and of the history of developmentalist attempts that characterise the European late colonial states, have left us with very incomplete images of important trajectories. In the seemingly more “liberal” large colonial empires—notably the French and British—sails were set by 1945 towards a policy of investment and economic change. Some of the scholarly debates question whether this investment was genuine or just a last resort to avoid (rapid) decolonisation; others put the emphasis on inadequate routines of development implemented in these territories, many of which have apparently been continued since decolonisation.In this context, we encounter a clear lack of understanding about how decisions made by individual actors on the administrative level interacted with the larger panorama of social conditions in colonial territories, and of the consequences that these interactions had for the paths towards decolonisation. For a smaller empire such as the Belgian colony of Congo-Léopoldville, these processes are still more obscure; and for the colonies ruled by authoritarian metropoles, as in the cases of territories under Spanish and Portuguese rule, stagnation and absence of change are often taken for granted. In other words, these territories, which were under the rule of metropoles regarded as rather weak in economic terms, are treated as unrepresentative of the broader, European movement towards change in colonial policies. However, the conditions of change towards economic and social modernisation in this latter group of empires, even when inhibited by lack of funding and weak professionalisation of the administration, are frequently very telling for the broader range of challenges that the late colonial states faced.

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Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Edited by Pingali Prabhu, Bigot Yves and Hans P. Binswanger. The Johns Hopkins University Press (1987), pp. 216, £22.95.

Experimental Agriculture ◽

10.1017/s0014479700015246 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 562-562

Author(s):

C. P. Crossley

Keyword(s):

Farming Systems ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Agricultural Mechanization ◽

Johns Hopkins University ◽

Sub Saharan

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Some Swazi Views on Land Tenure

Africa ◽

10.2307/1157542 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 253-278 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

A. J. B. Hughes

Keyword(s):

Social Control ◽

Social Organization ◽

Land Tenure ◽

Social Order ◽

Economic Change ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Modern World ◽

Way Of Life ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphVirtually all sub-Saharan Africa is in the throes of rapid social and economic change. The recent fashion for meteorological allegories has merely served to stress the fact that these changes are also causing very considerable problems. The dilemma facing most administrations throughout the continent is that while much of the old way of life must inevitably disappear if the tribal groups involved are to hope to survive as viable populations in the modern world, this same process can, if it occurs too fast, threaten the whole social order and the systems of social control and social organization, which have hitherto bound them together as groups and governed the day-to-day lives of their members.

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