WAS THE WAGE BURDEN TOO HEAVY? SETTLER FARMING, PROFITABILITY, AND WAGE SHARES OF SETTLER AGRICULTURE IN NYASALAND, c. 1900–60

Abstract

The historical role of European farming in Southern and Central Africa has received a great deal of attention among scholars over the years. A striking consensus exists in the Scholarly literature, namely that the success or failure of European farming in Southern Africa was to a large extent dependent upon the colonizers' access to and control over cheap labour, which they in turn could only access through strong support of the colonial state. Yet, these propositions have so far not been systematically and empirically tested. This article is a first attempt to do that by analysing the 'wage-burden' European settler farmers faced. The wage-burden is identified by measuring wage shares (total amount paid in the form of wages as a share of total profits) on European farms in colonial Africa. Based on archival documents, we construct time-series for value of output, transportation costs, investments in agriculture, and wages paid for the European tobacco and tea sector in colonial Malawi. Our results contradict both previous research on settler colonialism in Africa and the historiography of Nyasaland. Our estimates show that settler farming did not collapse in the 1930s as commonly assumed. On the contrary, the value of production on both tobacco and tea farms increased significantly. And so did the settler farmers' capacity to capture the profits, which was manifested in a declining wage share over time. In contrast with previous research, we argue that the declining wage share cannot be explained by domestic colonial policies but rather through changes in regional migration patterns, and global commodity markets. Migration patterns had a significant impact on the supply of farm labour and global commodity markets influenced value of production. Market forces rather than colonial policies shaped the development trajectory of settler farming in Nyasaland.

Endogenous Processes of Colonial Settlement. The Success and Failure of European Settler Farming in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…It even happened that the colonial authorities actively opposed attempts by the settlers to exploit local labour (Green 2013). To be sure, the colonial authorities initially tried to facilitate settler farmers’ access to cheap labour by implementing a differential tax rate system in 1901 (Bolt and Green 2015), but they abolished this system in 1921 4 .…”

“…Most of the tobacco-growing Europeans in Nyasaland were British ex-servicemen with limited experience in farming. Settlers continuously complained about high labour costs and demanded the colonial authorities to take action to ensure adequate supplies of labour by, for example, the re-introduction of the differential tax system (Bolt and Green 2015). However, these demands were not met and after the Second World War most of the resources at the Department of Agriculture instead went to support African agriculture (Green 2007).…”

“…Rural nominal wages were higher in Southern Rhodesia than in Nyasaland throughout the period of investigation despite the more regressive policies in the former case. However, measured as a share of total output, settler farms in Southern Rhodesia faced a lower wage bill from the 1930s onwards (Bolt and Green 2015).…”

Coping with the Double Crisis: Lake Chilwa Recession and the Great Depression on Chisi Island in Colonial Malawi, 1930–1935

“…Nyasaland, belonging to the periphery of the British Empire and thus only partially integrated in the global capitalist economy, was not directly affected by the deflationary policies that the depression caused. However, the colonial authorities in Nyasaland found it increasingly difficult to raise revenue as the economic depression led to a significant decline in export incomes (Bolt and Green 2015; Madsen 2001). The decline in world market prices and the collapse of European settler agriculture had severe effects on the financial position of the colonial state in Nyasaland.…”

“…Migration in search of employment on the European farms in southern Rhodesia or in the mines in South Africa was also a limited option due to the decline in demand for labor caused by the global economic crisis. The production of cash crops, such as cotton and tobacco, by Europeans in Nyasaland (now Malawi) had decreased significantly in the early 1930s (Bolt and Green 2015). By the mid-1930s land under tobacco cultivation on European estates had fallen to a mere 20% of the 1927 amount, while cotton production had almost collapsed, decreasing by 1934 to 23% of the 1927 production area (Chirwa 1997) (Fig.…”