1920s to 1930s · Africanspan
African smallholders keep growing the crops the empires sell
›Read the full entryClose
Through the 1920s and 1930s the export crops of tropical Africa came off small African farms. The change of those two decades was the lorry. Roads spread, motor transport followed them, and commercial agriculture reached villages the railways had left alone. Market towns filled up. African cultivators, mostly men using the labour of the women in their households, opened new ground for export crops. After a generation of conquest the 1920s were steady and comparatively prosperous, and the population grew. The communities forming out of this were part peasant and part capitalist, and European administrations disliked them. Officials preferred chiefs they had appointed and were wary of African businessmen who would eventually want politics as well as profit. The weakness in the arrangement was visible before the crash came. African producers had no way to move a world price, and what Africa sold remained crops, timber and minerals. In parts of West Africa the trade of the nineteenth century simply carried on under a new flag.
A code like HT-WIB-000044 is a bates number. It marks one page of our stamped scan of the book, so the same page can be found again by anyone working from the same copy. Open one to see every entry drawn from that page.