JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies.This study attempts to explore the working of the colonial state in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) with special reference to the Ushi-Kabende peasantry of the Luapula-Bangweulu area. The on-going debate on the role of the state has progressed from the narrow functionalist-instrumentalist approach of the 1960s to an analysis which considers the intricacies of state apparatus and the counterbalancing forces which influence the operation of these apparatus, both from within and from outside.1 The present case study, situated within the framework of the relative autonomy formulation, provides yet another illustration of the multifarious constraints on the autonomy of the colonial state attempting to promote its own interests as well as to act as an agent of capitalism. To do so, this article unfolds the historical process of rural development in the UshiKabende area because development plans provide a unique context to examine the relationship of the state with different classes and sub-classes as well as between "state managers"2 and field administrators.Following John Lonsdale's analysis of the state and peasantry in colonial Africa,3 it is argued here that the instrumentality of the colonial state in Zambia as the tool of capital was considerably conditioned by the social conflicts generated by the process of primitive accumulation as much as by the pursuit of *I wish to thank Marcia Wright, Martin Kaniki, and Ansu Datta for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper which was also presented at a seminar KUSUM DATTA its own interests. Undoubtedly, the main preoccupation of this state, which in addition to being colonial and capitalist was also a settler colony, was to regulate and advance accumulation by capital -both local and metropolitan -but "within the framework of local control." In this process, it was confronted with "conflicts within and contradictions between the different forms of production, non-capitalist and capitalist ..."4Over and above all this was its concern to protect its own legitimacy and economic and political viability. The basic dilemma of the colonial state in Zambia was more complex than that of its counterpart in Kenya,5 although both were settler colonies where colonial capitalism was supreme despite pronouncements of "native paramountcy."6 Unlike Kenya, Northern Rhodesia had to operate within the Southern African regional political economy, dominated by the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Thus, for example, the North...
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