Rural society and cotton in colonial Zaire / Osumaka Likaka.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Likaka, Osumaka, 1953-

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cotton farmers--Democratic Republic of the Congo--History.

Cotton farmers.

Cotton trade--Democratic Republic of the Congo--History.

Cotton trade.

Peasants--Democratic Republic of the Congo--History.

Peasants.

Democratic Republic of the Congo--Rural conditions.

Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 189 p. ) ill., map ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, c1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This masterful social and economic history of rural Zaire examines the complex and lasting effects of forced cotton cultivation in central Africa from 1917 to 1960. Osumaka Likaka recreates daily life inside the colonial cotton regime. He shows that, to ensure widespread cotton production and to overcome continued peasant resistance, the colonial state and the cotton companies found it necessary to augment their use of threats and force with efforts to win the cooperation of the peasant farmers, through structural reforms, economic incentives, and propaganda exploiting African popular culture. As local plots of food crops grown by individual households gave way to commercial fields of cotton, a whole host of social, economic, and environmental changes followed. Likaka reveals how food shortages and competition for labor were endemic, forests were cleared, social stratification increased, married women lost their traditional control of agricultural production, and communities became impoverished while local chiefs enlarged their power and prosperity. Likaka documents how the cotton regime promoted its cause through agricultural exhibits, cotton festivals, films, and plays, as well as by raising producer prices and decreasing tax rates. He also shows how the peasant laborers in turn resisted regimented agricultural production by migrating, fleeing the farms for the bush, or sabotaging plantings by surreptitiously boiling cotton seeds. Small farmers who had received appallingly low prices from the cotton companies resisted by stealing back their cotton by night from the warehouses, to resell it in the morning. Likaka draws on interviews with more than fifty informants in Zaire and Belgium and reviews an impressive array of archival materials, from court records to comic books. In uncovering the tumultuous economic and social consequences of the cotton regime and by emphasizing its effects on social institutions, Likaka enriches historical understanding of African agriculture and development.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Illustrations and Map

Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Organization of Production: The Cotton Labor Process

Chapter 2 Forced Cotton Production and Social Control

Chapter 3 Sharing the Social Product: Peasants and the Market

Chapter 4 Cotton and Social Inequality

Chapter 5 The Infrapolitics of the Cotton Cultivators

Conclusion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-182) and index.

ISBN:

9786612424076

9780585081090

0585081093

9781282424074

1282424076

9780299153335

0299153339

OCLC:

44961684

Publisher Number:

2027/heb08765 hdl