Plunder for Profit

A Socio-environmental History of Tobacco Farming in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-09625-6
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 162, 331 Seiten

Reihe: African Studies

Exploring over a century of Zimbabwe's colonial and post-colonial history, Elijah Doro investigates the murky and noxious history of that powerful crop: tobacco. In a compelling narrative that debunks previous histories glorifying tobacco farming, Doro reveals the indelible marks that tobacco left on landscapes, communities, and people. Demonstrating that the history of tobacco farming is inseparable from that of colonial encounter, Doro outlines how tobacco became an institutionalised culture of production, which was linked to state power and natural ecosystems, and driven by a pernicious heritage of unbridled plunder. With the destruction of landscapes, the negative impacts of the export trade and the growing tobacco epidemic in Zimbabwe, tobacco farming has a long and varied legacy in southern African and across the world. Connecting the local to the global, and the environmental to the social, this book illuminates our understandings of environmental history, colonialism and sustainability.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Doro, Elijah

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Global perspectives and local narratives: a socio-environmental history of pioneer tobacco farming in Southern Rhodesia, 1893–1945; 2. The post-war tobacco boom and the development of conservationism in Southern Rhodesia, 1947–1960; 3. A silenced spring? Exploring Africa's 'Rachel Carson moment': A socio-environmental history of the pesticides in tobacco production in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–1980; 4. Beyond agency: The African peasantry, the state and tobacco in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1980; 5. 'The threat of soil erosion is far more permanent than the threat of sanctions': The unilateral declaration of independence, war, and ecological change in tobacco farming landscapes in Southern Rhodesia, 1960–1980; 6. Tobacco control discourses and the tobacco industry in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, 1953–2020; Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Doro, Elijah
Elijah Doro is a research fellow at the University of Agder and an environmental historian with an interest in southern Africa. His research on agrarian and environmental histories is inspired by his personal experiences growing up in Zimbabwe's tobacco-farming countryside and participating in the tobacco production economy.