The Royal African Society

The Cash-Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Reappraisal

Author(s): John Tosh
Source: African Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 314 (Jan., 1980), pp. 79-94
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society
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THE CASH-CROP REVOLUTION IN TROPICAL AFRICA:
AN AGRICULTURAL REAPPRAISAL'

ToSH
JOHN

No ONE could complain that African agriculturalhistory is out of favour with

today's historians;indeed, it can with some justice claim to be the specialismof
the 1970s par excellence. In retrospect the 'new wave' can be seen to have
begun with the publication in 1971 of two short histories of agriculture in
Tanzania and Zambia by John Iliffe and Terence Ranger respectively.2 Six
years later The Rootsof Rural Poverty in Centraland SouthernAfrica brought
together a number of well documentedlocal studies which served to displaythe
achievementsof the new historiographyto date and to map out the direction it
was likely to take in the future.3 Africanistjournalsare today full of articleson
topics in agriculturalhistory.4 As Robin Palmer, co-editor of Roots of Rural
Poverty,puts it, 'agriculturalhistoryhas become decidedlytrendy.'5
Much of the interest aroused by this new research is due to the light which
it sheds on a theme which has long concerned both historians and econ-
omists-the phenomenal expansion of tropical Africa's agricultural pro-
duction between about 1890 and 1930. Although the sale of crops for cash was
by no means unknown in pre-colonial Africa, and the spread of cash crops
during the early colonial period was seldom associated with the creation of
a 'cash economy' in the full sense of the term, it is nevertheless appropriate
to speak of a 'cash-crop revolution'; whether measured in terms of its con-
tribution to world trade or its role in expanding the market in African
societies, cash-crop production during this period entailed economic changes
of fundamentalimportance.
The appeal of the new agriculturalhistory is enhanced by its unequivocally
'Africanist'slant. Here, as in other branchesof Africanhistory, recent scholar-
ship has aimed at the recovery of African initiatives in the past. In this case,
however, it is the initiativeof the commonman which is coming to light; whereas
during the 1960s the hstoriographyof rural Africa seemed at times to be
Dr John Tosh is presently lecturer in history at the Polytechnic of North London and previously
was a researchfellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge.
1. This paper rests on the insights of many scholars. I am particularlygrateful to Dr Polly Hill,
Dr John Iliffe, Dr John Lonsdale and Dr RichardWallerfor their commentson earlierdrafts; none
of them is necessarilyin agreementwith all the argumentsadvancedhere.
2. John Iliffe, AgriculturalChange in Modern Tanganyika(Nairobi, 1971); T. O. Ranger, The
AgriculturalHistory of Zambia (Lusaka, 1971). The most unjustly neglected historical work in
this genre is undoubtedlyC. C. Wrigley, Cropsand Wealthin Uganda (Kampala, 1959).
3. Robin Palmer& Neil Parsons (eds), The Rootsof Rural Povertyin Centraland SouthernAfrica
(London, 1977).
4. In October 1978 a special issue of the Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies (vol. 5, no. 1) was
devoted to 'Themes in AgrarianHistory and Society'.
5. Palmer& Parsons,Rootsof Rural Poverty, p. 221.
79
80 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

identified with the elitist politics of chiefship, the hero of today's historiansis
unquestionablythe peasant. In particular,he is widely regardedas the architect
of tropicalAfrica'sexport achievementduringthe earlycolonialperiod.
To have broadenedand enriched our conception of the African past in this
way is no mean feat. But further advancedepends in part on a recognitionthat
this imposingstructurehas been raised on far too narrowa base. What passes
for 'agriculturalhistory' is all too often agrarianhistory with most of the agri-
culture left out. Very little awarenessis shown of the circumstancesin which
cash crops were actuallygrown on Africansmallholdings. The peasant may be
the hero of moderneconomichistoryin Africa,but he is strangelydetachedfrom
his habitat which-far more than any external incentive or constraint-
conditionedhis agriculturalactivities.
Cash-crop cultivation was conditioned in the first instance by the natural
environment-by soils, by disease and pests, and above all by rainfall--all of
them subject to a high degree of variationwithin tropical Africa. This may
seem an elementarypoint. But most historicaldiscussionis conductedin a kind
of ecological vacuum. A fruitful area of recent researchhas been the African
response to the ecological catastrophe of epidemics, population decline and
encroachmentof the bush, which afflicted East Africa especially between 1890
and 1920;6 but almost no regard has been given to the everyday, constant con-
straintsimposedby the different environmentsof tropicalAfrica. In the second
place, success in producinga cash crop was intimatelydependenton the relation-
ship between that crop and the established complex of food crops. Not only
was this the historicalbackgroundto cash-crop agriculture;it was also its per-
manentaccompaniment. Throughoutthe early colonialperiod the vast majority
of cash-crop producers were part-subsistence farmers, who attached high
priority to producing all their domestic food requirements. How this com-
mitment affected production for the market varied accordingto the environ-
ment. Its influence was complexand often inhibiting.

The currentdebate
The bearing of these agriculturalconsiderationson the cash-crop revolution
can most easily be demonstratedby looking briefly at a central issue of recent
debate. Historians of the 'new wave' attribute the success of African agri-
culturalproductionto the drive and resourcefulnessof the peasant, who usually
had a shrewdergraspof marketopportunitiesthan the agriculturalofficer or the
company representative. But during the 1960s most accounts stressed
European, rather than African initiative. Two variants of the 'Europeanist'
interpretationwere current. The first placed most of the credit with private

6. See especially Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Controland Economic Developmentin East African
History (London, 1977), and John Iliffe, A Modern Historyof Tanganyika(Cambridge, 1979), ch.
5.
 AFRICA
IN TROPICAL
REVOLUTION
CASH-CROP 81

enterprise:it was the Europeantradingcompanieswho overcame the apathy of

tradition-boundfarmersby introducingthem to an attractiverange of consumer
goods, usually through the medium of immigrant petty traders such as the
Lebanese and Indians.7 The second shifted the emphasis--at least in the
decisive initialphase of cash-cropfarming-to the coercive power of the colonial
state, usually exercised through its African subordinates,either directly or by
meansof individualtaxation.8
The divergence between these various schools of thought is obvious
enough. Yet it is importantto recognize that underlying all three is a shared
assumption, which has thereby been removed from the arena of debate. This
assumptionis that, on the eve of the colonial era, the indigenous economies of
tropicalAfricawere endowed with substantialunused resourcesof both land and
labour; it was these productive resources-whether mobilized by grass-roots
initiative, foreign enterpriseor governmentpressure-which enabledcash crops
to be grown on a substantial scale with minimal displacement of existing
economic activities. It is scarcely surprising that the Europeanist interpre-
tations do not inspect this issue more closely, tied as they usually are to the
stereotype of the idle and wasteful farmer. But the Africanistschool does little
better. The impressionconveyed by most of the contributorsto Rootsof Rural
Poverty is that peasants in central Africa were able to respond to the market
providedthat the colonialstate did not stack the cards againstthem in the inter-
ests of white farming; environmentalconstraintsand the prior claims of food
crops are generallyignored.9
Both A. G. Hopkins and J. S. Hogendorn have made explicit this assumption
about surplus land and labourby invokingthe vent-for-surplustheory of export
growth, which was originatedby Adam Smith and later applied to the modern
developing world by Hla Myint.1o According to this theory, the productive
resources of an underdevelopedcountry only become fully utilized at the point
when it enters internationaltrade and experiences effective demandfor the first
time; the slack in the traditionaleconomy meansthat producersusing indigenous
technology can grow for the export marketwhile still maintainingdomesticpro-
duction at its accustomedlevel. Neither Hopkins nor Hogendornis completely
satisfied with the theory-especially the limited place it allows for the initiative
of the grower-but they accept its basic premise regarding surplus land and
labour, which indeed underlies most other recent work on the period. On this

7. E.g. G. K. Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, Governmentand Economic Growth in Nigeria

(Homewood, Ill., 1966).
8. See the examples in Wrigley, Cropsand Wealth,pp. 16, 20, 47.
9. The exception is David Beach's essay, 'The Shona Economy:Branchesof Production',in Roots
of Rural Poverty, pp. 37-65.
10. H. Myint, 'The "classicaltheory" of internationaltrade and the underdeveloped countries',
The EconomicJournal 68 (1958), pp. 317-37, reprinted in H Myint, Economic Theoryand the
UnderdevelopedCountries(New York, 1971), pp. 118-46.
82 AFFAIRS
AFRICAN

showing, the costs of the cash-crop revolution to the indigenous economies of

Africawere modest enough."
At a continentallevel, vent-for-surplustheory seems demonstrablytrue for
the early colonial period, since tropicalAfrica was not a significantimporterof
food and by the 1920s was probably less vulnerable to famine than for many
decades;moreoveruntil the 1930s peasantagriculturewas largely unaffected by
technicalmodificationssuch as the ox-drawnplough. But what holds good as a
rough-and-readygeneralizationis by no means applicable to specific regions,
where marked variation was to be found. So far as land is concerned, this
variationwas admittedlynot very significant. Prior to the Second World War
land shortagewas, with few exceptions, unknown. Surplus land was taken up
for cash-crop farming either by migrationover quite short distances, or-the
usual method-by piecemeal expansion of the household plots. Labour
resources, however, present quite a different picture. African indigenous
farming systems varied greatly in their labour requirements-to an extent that
might determinethe success or failure of cash cropping. And it is in the sphere
of labourthat the impactof both the environmentand the type of staples grown
was so crucial;to deal in extremes, it explainsa largepartof the contrastbetween
the spectacularsuccess of the cocoa farmersof southern Ghana and the disas-
trous effects of cotton cultivation on the peoples of Oubangui. Proper
evaluationof the applicabilityof vent-for-surplustheory requiresmuch greater
attention to the constraintsof different environmentsand different crop com-
plexes thanhas yet been given.12
Influenceson recenthistoricalwork
The agriculturalconsiderationsunder discussion here are not of the kind to
excite historians,whose business is the study of change. The naturalenviron-
ment and the subsistence economy can easily be regarded as permanent
'backdrop'features which persist irrespectiveof whether the society in question
has exchange relations with the world economy. Nor are these matters
illuminated by conventional historical sources. Most studies so far have
depended heavily on colonial archives, often at the expense of first hand
observationof farmingsystemsin operation.13
11. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), pp. 231-6; J. S.
Hogendorn, 'Economic initiative and African cash-farming;pre-colonial origins and early colonial
developments', in Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960, vol. 4, ed. P. Duignan & L. H. Gann
(Cambridge, 1975), pp. 283-328; J. S. Hogendorn, 'The vent-for-surplus model and African cash
agricultureto 1914', Savanna 5 (1976), pp. 15-28. The applicationof the theory to tropicalAfrica
has been criticizedby some historians,but for reasonsdifferent from those put forwardhere: SaraS.
Berry, Cocoa, Custom,and Socio-EconomicChangein Rural WesternNigeria (Oxford, 1975), pp.
2-6, 87-9; W. M. Freund & R. W. Shenton, ' "Vent-for-surplus"theory and the economic history
of West Africa', Savanna 6 (1977), pp. 191-6.
12. The reluctance to investigate the labour requirements of African agriculture is the more
remarkablein that the early colonial period is commonly recognized to have been a time of acute
labourshortagein many colonialeconomies.
13. A related criticismis made of Rootsof Rural Povery in T. O. Ranger, 'Growingfrom the roots:
reflections on peasant researchin central and southern Africa',Journal of SouthernAfrican Studies
5 (1978), p. 107.
 CASH-CROP IN TROPICAL
REVOLUTION AFRICA 83

The strengthsand weaknesses of the 'new wave' have also been stronglycon-
ditioned by formative influences from outside the discipline. A generationof
historianshas been inspiredby Polly Hill's remarkablework, TheMigrantCocoa
Farmersof SouthernGhana (1963). But this book, appropriatelysubtitled 'a
study in rural capitalism',is essentially about entrepreneurship-about farming
as a business venture ratherthan as a struggle with the environment;as Hill was
the first to admit, she had little to say about purely agriculturalquestions such as
the relationshipbetween food farming and cocoa farming.14 Since the early
1970s agriculturalhistorians have been strongly affected by a very different
influence-the theories of underdevelopmentoriginatedby students of Latin
Americaand transmittedto Africanstudies by GiovanniArrighi,Walter Rodney
and others.15 Since these theories attribute underdevelopmentexclusively to
the impactof world tradethroughunequalexchange, the result has been to focus
interest on the African farmer's response to external stimuli and constraints-
government, settler and trader.16 Indeed, among the defining attributes of a
peasantrycontact with 'an internationalcapitalisteconomic system' is now seen
by historians as central.17 The effect of both the entrepreneurialand the
underdevelopmentapproachis therefore to discouragean interest in what was
practicablefrom a purely agriculturalpoint of view.
It is in the writings of geographers'8and agriculturaleconomists19that a sure
grasp of agriculturalrealities is to be found, but their work is little studied by
historians.20 Anthropology has certainly exercised a constant influence on
African historiography,but to little avail in the present context. Economic
anthropologyhas for some time been primarilyconcernedwith exchange rather
than production;nor has there been much systematicdiscussionof the relation-

14. Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmersof SouthernGhana (Cambridge,1963), p. 188n. Work
inspiredby Hill includes J. S. Hogendorn, 'The origins of the groundnuttrade in Northern Nigeria',
in Growthand Developmentof the Nigerian Economy,ed. C. K. Eicher & C. Liedholm (Michigan,
1970), pp. 30-51, and Berry, Cocoa.
15. Giovanni Arrighi, 'Labour supplies in historicalperspective: a study of the proletarianization
of the African peasantry in Rhodesia', Journal of DevelopmentStudies 6 (1970), pp. 197-234;
Walter Rodney, How Europe UnderdevelopedAfrica (London, 1972).
16. This tendency is particularlymarkedin Palmer& Parsons,Rootsof Rural Poverty.
17. John S. Saul & Roger Woods, 'Africanpeasantries', in Peasantsand Peasant Societies,ed. T.
Shanin(Harmondsworth,1971), p. 106. Their definition, widely cited by historians,is now being
increasingly questioned: Henry Slater, 'Peasantries and primitive accumulation in Southern
Africa', in SouthernAfrican Researchin Progress:CollectedPapers: 2 (York University, 1977), pp.
82-94; Ranger, 'Growingfrom the roots', pp. 101-4.
18. E.g. P. PNlissier,Lespaysans du Senegal (Saint-Yrieix, 1966).
19. E.g. M. R. Haswell, Economics of Agriculture in a Savannah Village (London, 1953).
Modern researchon the labour requirementsof African agricultureis conveniently summarizedin
John H. Cleave, African Farmers:Labour Use in the Developmentof SmallholderAgriculture(New
York, 1974).
20. On technical matters historiansfrequently consult William Allan, The African Husbandman
(Edinburgh, 1965). But Allan wrote mostly about the carryingcapacityof the land under different
systems of cultivation, in the light of land shortage and soil deteriorationin Northern Rhodesia in
the late 1940s. The relevance of his work to the period before 1930is limited.
84 AFRICAN
AFFAIRS

ship between the environmentand the social organizationof labour.21 For lack
of appropriatestimulus from without, historianshave continued to follow the
approachto agriculturalhistory which arises most naturallyfrom the habitual
concernsof their own discipline.
In this paper an attempt is made to re-erect some traditionalsignposts in the
study of Africanagriculturewhich have been trampledunderfootin the present
forced march. The point of departure is that most basic tenet of textbook
wisdom-the contrast between forest and savanna. If the savanna takes the
lion's shareof the discussion,this is because historians,in so far as they have any
mental picture of agriculturalconditions,appearto base it on what they know of
the forest, which accountsfor a minorityof both land and populationin tropical
Africa. The implications of the forest/savanna distinction for crop choice,
labour requirementsand the occupationalstructureof ruralsociety suggest that
some of the assumptionswhich underlie the present historiographyare due for
overhaul.

Savanna andforest
From an agriculturalpoint of view, the essentialdifferencebetween forest and
savanna22lies not so much in the staplesgrown-root and tree crops in the forest,
grain crops in the savanna-as in the varying reliabilityof cultivation and the
effort needed to make it a success. Here the vital factor is rainfall. Compared
with the humid forest, the savannareceives an annual rainfallwhich is inferior
not only in quantitybut also in distribution:in the groundnutzone of Senegal, for
example, agriculturalactivity is effectively confined to a rainy season of 100 to
130 days in the year.23 One consequenceof the severity of the dry seasonis that
the farmer's choice of crops is limited to those with a short growing period.
Moreover cultivation in the savanna is highly vulnerable to any reduction or
maldistributionof rainfall;failure of the early rainsin the semi-aridlands of the
Sahel and muchof Tanzania,for example, is a frequentcause of crop failure.
So far as labouris concerned, the most significanteffect of the rainfallregime
of the savannais that the year-roundroutine of the forest-dwellermust be com-
pressed into a farmingseasonlastingonly four to seven months. On top of this,
the traditionalstaples of the savanna(millet and sorghum)are much more labour
intensive than those of the forest (yam and plantain). Clearing the bush for
cultivationis certainlyless arduousin the savanna,but once the crops are planted

21. A relevant critique is C. Meillassoux, 'From reproductionto production:a Marxist approach

to economic anthropology', Economyand Society 1 (1972), pp. 93-105. Cultural ecology, which
developed in the USA, is very much a minorityspecialismamong anthropologists,but see R. McC.
Netting, Hill Farmersof Nigeria (Seattle, 1968). In British social anthropology,the pronounced
ecological element in E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer (Oxford, 1940), has not been widely
emulated.
22. Followingcurrentusage savanna is here taken as a loose term which covers both woodlandand
grassland;it therefore encompasses a much wider range of conditions than does forest. For the
finer distinctions,see W. B. Morgan& J. C. Pugh, WestAfrica (London, 1969), pp. 208-17.
23. Pelissier, Paysans, p. 86.
 CASH-CROP
REVOLUTION
IN TROPICAL
AFRICA 85

their care and harvestingtend to be more exacting than is the case with the root
and tree staples of the forest.24The result is very heavy peak demands on
labour-typically at the beginning of the season, when the ground must be
quickly preparedfor sowing at the optimaltime, and in the middle of the season,
when the first harvest often coincides with the sowing and weeding of later
crops. Moreover most of these tasks fall due when the work-force is least
equipped to carry them out, for in the first half of the farming season the
previous year's harvestmay well be runninglow and food consumptionseverely
reduced.25 So whereas the peoples of southern Nigeria can grow large
surpluses of yams 'without great effort by the ordinaryhousehold',26the pro-
duction of any surplus in the savannadepends on a skilled understandingof the
environmentand an effective deploymentof labour.
This contrastbetween forest and savannabecame still more pronouncedwith
the introductionof cash crops in the early colonial period.27 In the forest the
labour requirementsof the traditionalstaples were for the most part modest
enough to allow the addition of cash crops without any threat to food pro-
duction. The same was true of the more recently introduced food crops,
cassava(manioc)and maize. In the Bongouanoudistrictof the Ivory Coast, for
example, the heaviest labour requirementsof cocoa and coffee at harvest-time
neatly coincidedwith the slackperiodsin the traditionalfarmingcalendar.28
On the other hand, the cash crops most characteristicof the savanna-
groundnuts and rain-grown (as opposed to irrigated) cotton--entailed a very
burdensome addition to what was often already a strained working routine.
Cotton (to take the worst case)

'is one of the most demandingforms of crop productionin terms of labour

inputs because it entails carefully timed planting, sowing of seeds at regular
intervals, periodic thinningof cotton plants, constantweeding, and rapidand
carefulharvestingto avoid spoilage.29

In Sukumaland(Tanzania), where cotton had been grown since the 1920s, a

survey during the 1960s showed that under hoe cultivation an acre of cotton
needed about 600 man-hours per annum, as against 380 hours for an acre of

24. See the comparisonbetween plantainand millett in David N. McMaster, A SubsistenceCrop

Geographyof Uganda (Bude, 1962), especially pp. 16-18.
25. For a critical discussion of this question, see Marvin P. Miracle, 'Seasonal hunger: a vague
concept and an unexploredproblem, Bulletinde 1'IFAN 23 (1961), pp. 273-83.
26. D. Forde and R. Scott, TheNative Economiesof Nigeria (London, 1946), p. 42.
27. It should be noted that in many parts of Senegambiathe growing of groundnuts for export
predatedthe establishmentof formal French and Britishrule.
28. B. F. Johnston,'Changesin agriculturalproductivity',in EconomicTransitionin Africa, ed. M.
J. Herskovits & M. Harwitz (London, 1964), p. 153.
29. R. E. Dummett, 'Obstacles to government-assistedagriculturaldevelopment in West Africa:
cotton-growingexperimentationin Ghanain the early 20th century', AgriculturalHistoryReview 23
(1975), p. 170.
86 AFFAIRS
AFRICAN

sorghum.30 In a relatively short farmingseason much of the cash crop routine

clashedwith the labourcycle of the grainstaples. Whereasthe life of a cocoa or
coffee tree runs into decades, cotton and groundnuts are annuals, normally
grown in rotationwith grain crops. The annual plantingof the cash crop was
thus a majoraddition to the workloadat the start of the agriculturalyear. In
East Africaone of the earliestand sharpestconflictsbetween agriculturalofficers
and peasant farmersturned on the issue of whether cotton or grain should be
sown during the first rains when prospects for a good yield were best.31
Comparableobservationshave been made with regard to groundnut-growing
in Senegal.32The reasonwhy sesame (benniseed) was favouredas a cash crop by
farmersin severalsavannaareas-though only the Tiv made a success of it-was
because its labour requirementswere so much lower than those of either cotton
or groundnuts.33 In the savanna,therefore, unless a really attractiveprice was
offered, the very considerableexertions requiredto produce a marketablecrop
of cotton or groundnutswere likely to deter growers altogether. This explains
why in so many savannaareascotton could only be grown by means of sustained
administrativecompulsion-as le cotondu commandant.34

Thedeploymentof labour
The intense seasonalpressureon labourin the savannahas had two significant
social consequences. The first is the institutionalization of cooperation
between households. Except where agrarianrelationshave been commercial-
ized, the working beer-party is, in William Allan's words, 'almost universal
throughoutAfrica'.35 But it is in the grain-growingsavannathat this institution
is most developed because its contributionto agriculturalsurvivalthere is most
direct. The communal work-group typically has a fixed membership of
between ten and thirty households, lasting from one farmingseason to the next,
and the active participantsinclude dependent adult males as well as household
heads. The constituent households form a territorial bloc, and are bound
together by ties of neighbourhoodratherthan kinship. These ties are activated
30. D. von Rotenhan, 'Cotton farming in Sukumaland:cash cropping and its implications', in
Smallholder Farming and Smallhoider Developmentin Tanzania, ed. H. Ruthenberg (Munich,
1968), p. 75.
31. David J. Vail, A Historyof AgriculturalInnovationand Developmentin TesoDistrict, Uganda
(Syracuse, 1972), pp. 54, 76; Margaret J. Hay, 'Economic change in Luoland:Kowe, 1890-1945'
(PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1972), pp. 138-9; J. Cabot, 'La culture du coton au
Tchad', Annalesdegiographie 66 (1957), pp. 501, 505.
32. Pelissier, Paysans, pp. 157-8; A. Vanhaeverbeke, Rimuneration du travail et commerce
exterieur,(Louvain 1970), p. 54.
33. David C. Dorward, 'An unknown Nigerian export: Tiv benniseed production, 1900-1960',
Journal of African History 16 (1975), pp. 436-7. Similarobservationsare made of societies whose
preference for sesame production was frustrated: Hay, 'Economic change', pp. 134, 139; John
Tosh, 'Lango agricultureduring the early colonial period:land and labourin a cash-crop economy',
Journal of AfricanHistory 19 (1978), pp. 427-8.
34. Eric de Dampierre, 'Coton noir, caf6 blanc', Cahiersd'etudesafricaines2 (1960), p. 133. Cf.
J. R. Catford, 'The introductionof cotton as a cash-crop in the Maridi area of Equatoria',Sudan
Notes & Records34 (1953), pp. 153-69.
35. Allan, African Husbandman, p. 44.
 REVOLUTION
CASH-CROP IN TROPICAL
AFRICA 87

as each member in turn calls out the group to perform a day's work on his
fields.36 The basic function of the work-group is to deploy the labour of the
communityas efficiently as possible at times of peak demand, when speed is of
the essence. The efficiency of communallabour as comparedwith individual
effort is usually stressed by the participants,and in the case of certain agri-
culturalpeoples of Niger this contentionhas been amplyconfirmedby indepen-
dent testing.37 As Philip Gulliver puts it in his account of the Ndendeuli of
Tanzania,

'Collectivelabour, with the encouragementof song, the tappingof sentiments

of mutualityand concord, and the short beer-drink afterwards,lightens the
burden and maintainsincentive at a tryingtime.'38

The prevalence of communal labour finds no echo in the work of recent

historians, who seem to regard the farminghousehold as having always been a
self-containedunit of labour. Yet communallabourplayed a significantpart in
the transitionto cash-crop agriculture. In the savannaespecially, it became if
anything more important as the addition of cotton or groundnuts intensified
seasonal labour bottlenecks.39 Over the longer term, the persistence of com-
munal labour greatly affected the pace of economic differentiationwithin the
community. Here the significantvariablewas the nature of the remuneration
offered to membersof the work-group. Some societies traditionallypractiseda
strict form of reciprocallabour:the beer-partylaid on by the host at the end of
the day was regardedas little more than a neighbourlygesture; the real reward
was the entitlementof a regularparticipantto ask the groupto work for him on a
later day, and all members enjoyed equal rights in this respect. In other
societies, however, the beer was seen as little short of payment, and only those
with sufficient beer-flour left over from the previous harvest could call in the
work-group; those with most beer-flour cultivated the largest acreage and so
were able to host even more work-partiesin the following year. Once agri-
culturalsurplusesbecame more convertiblewith the coming of a cash economy,
the difference between these two types of communallabourbecame much more
sharply defined. While economic equality proved remarkably resilient in
societies with systems of the first type,40societies in the second categorytended
36. Considerable variation exists, but these features appear to be much the most widespread.
There has been little systematic analysis of communallabour, but see M. P. Moore, 'Co-operative
labour in peasant agriculture',Journal of Peasant Studies2 (1975), pp. 270-91. Good case-studies
appear in Philip Mayer, Two Studiesin AppliedAnthropologyin Kenya (London, 1951), pp. 5-18,
and C. Meillassoux, Anthropologieeconomiquedes Gourode C6ted'Ivoire (Paris, 1964), pp. 176-85.
37. Henri Raulin, Techniqueset bases socio-dconomiquesdes societesrurales nigdriennes(Niamey,
1963), p. 82.
38. P. H. Gulliver, Neighboursand Networks(Berkeley, 1971), p. 196.
39. Haswell, Economicsof Agriculture,pp. 21, 71; Mayer, Two Studies,p. 16. By contrastmaize,
which spread so rapidly as a cash crop in the southern savannaduring the early colonial period, was
associatedwith individualisticcultivation.
40. E.g. Tosh, 'Lango agriculture', pp. 437-8. Cf. Meillassoux, Anthropologieiconomique, p.
337.
88 AFFAIRS
AFRICAN

to produce two minorities-the richer farmers at the top who had successfully
manipulated communal labour, and at the bottom a labour pool of frequent
participantsin work parties who looked increasinglylike a rural proletariat.41
From this it was a short step to the hiring of labour, on which the commercial
farmer'ssuccess in the late colonialperiod was to be based.
The second way in which the deploymentof labour has been conditionedby
the heavy demandsof savannaagriculturelies in the allocationof tasks between
the sexes. Tropical Africa is commonly regarded as the classic case of female
farming, on the grounds that the hoe-unlike the plough-is essentially a
woman's implement.42 By comparisonwith Asia and Europe, female farming
undoubtedlyhas been prominentin Africa, and economistsand anthropologists
rightly seek to explain how it is that 'so many of Africa'swomen are performing
work which in Asia is undertaken by oxen.'43 There are, too, examples of
almost exclusively female farming in Africa: Marshall Sahlins's generally un-
convincing picture of young adult males passing a prolonged batchelorhoodin
warfare,the chase and social groomingdoes hold good for the Tio as recordedat
the end of the nineteenth century, and for the Lele as observed in the late
1940s.44 But the notion that in general men traditionallystood outside the
agriculturalwork-forceis simplynot true, as a glance at the EthnographicSurvey
of Africa makesclear.45 Instancesof agricultureas a male preserveinclude such
importantpeoples as the Hausa and the Yoruba. The most prevalent pattern,
however, is one of shared agriculturalresponsibilities, with for example men
clearingand preparingthe land, women doing most of the plantingand weeding,
and all hands taking part in the harvest. Sharedfarmingis above all character-
istic of the savanna,where the pressureon field labouris much more severe than
in the forest, and where the female domestic chores of water-carrying,foraging
for fuel and preparingfood are more time-consuming.46 Typical of these areas
is Bembacountry, where in the 1930s Audrey Richardsfound that the presence
of the men on the land was requiredfor five or six monthsin the year.47

41. S. F. Nadel, The Nuba (London, 1947), p. 56; Haswell, Economicsof Agriculture,pp. 23, 71;
F. Barth, 'Economic spheres in Darfur', in Themes in Economic Anthropology,ed. R. Firth
(London, 1967), pp. 149-74. Nadel's account, based on observationsmade within a decade of the
first cotton-growing in the Nuba Mountains, makes it clear that beer-as-payment,pre-dated the
introductionof cash crops.
42. Ester Boserup, Women'sRole in EconomicDevelopment(London, 1970).
43. M.R. Haswell, The Changing Patterns of Economic Activity in a Gambia Village (London,
1963), p. 77. See also J. R. Goody, Productionand Reproduction(Cambridge,1976), ch. 4.
44. Marshall D. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics(Chicago, 1972), pp. 51-5; J. Vansina, The Tio
Kingdomof the Middle Congo, 1880-1892 (London, 1973), pp. 159-62; Mary Douglas, TheLele of
the Kasai (London, 1963), pp. 33-5, 49-50.
45. This point was established more than fifty years ago: H. Baumann, 'The division of work
accordingto sex in African hoe agriculture', Africa 1 (1928), pp. 289-319, especially tables 1 and
2. An excellent recent discussionis Polly Hill, 'The West Africanfarminghousehold', in Changing
Social Structurein Ghana, ed. J. R. Goody (London, 1975), pp. 119-36.
46. J. R. Goody, 'Polygyny, economy and the role of women', in The Characterof Kinship, ed.
Goody (Cambridge,1973), pp. 185-6.
47. A. I. Richards,Land, Labourand Diet in NorthernRhodesia(London, 1939), pp. 395-7.
 CASH-CROP IN TROPICAL
REVOLUTION AFRICA 89

A restatement of these ethnographicfacts apears to be called for because

recent applicationof vent-for-surplustheory to the growth of cash-croppinghas
rested heavily on the female farming thesis. According to Hogendorn, the
establishmentof the colonialpax released Africanmales from their primaryrole
as warriors,while new market opportunitiesattractedthem into agriculturefor
the first time.48 This was indeed true of the Bagandaand the Fang, who took
up cotton and cocoa respectively;49and Hill concludesthat the reasonwhy cocoa-
farmingdeveloped so rapidlyin Ghanabefore 1914 was because the men could
devote most of their time to it.50 But outside these favoured forest environ-
ments-in the groundnutregion of Nigerian Hausalandand the cotton regionsof
the Belgian Congo and French Equatorial Africa, for example-men were
already actively engaged in food production; for them the adoption of a cash
crop, whether voluntary or enforced, meant either a difficult reordering of
prioritiesor an intensificationof effort far beyond accustomedlevels.

Exportcropsandfood crops
Clearly, then, over a large area of tropicalAfricathe additionof cash crops to
the food-producingeconomy was a cause of serious strain. Yet the desire for a
cash income from agriculturewas widespread:it enabledAfricansto pay their tax
and to satisfy their consumeraspirationswith the least disruptionto their way of
life. But did this cash income necessarily have to come from growing crops
for export? From the cultivator'spoint of view, the appeal of growing surplus
food crops instead was considerable. Firstly, this form of market agriculture
was compatiblewith his top priority:to produce all his subsistence needs. In
those regions--surely the majority-which were subject to wide variation in
yields from one year to the next, the farmerpreferreda cash crop which could be
held back for domestic consumptionif the harvest proved bad-a crop, that is,
which not only created purchasing power but also acted as a famine
reserve. Until the early 1920s famines were frequent, especially in the
savanna. And during the inter-war period by no means all governmentshad
mastered the logistical problems of famine relief; even where they had, the
farmer continued to fear starvation for some time after its incidence
had sharplydeclined. The possibilitythat the cultivationof an inedible export
crop might leave him short of food in a bad year was not to be lightly
accepted. If, on the other hand, the staple food crop could be marketed, then
the tricky problem of how to distribute labour at times of peak demand was
greatly eased: the farm managementproblemsof the maize farmer,for example,
were much more straightforwardthanthose of the cotton-grower.
The other principalreason for the appeal of growing food surpluses was that

48. Hogendorn, 'Economicinitiative', p. 290. Cf. Hopkins, EconomicHistory,p. 234.

49. Wrigley, Crops and Wealth, p. 57; G. Balandier, The Sociology of Black Africa (London,
1970), p. 182.
50. Hill, 'West Africanfarminghousehold', p. 121.
90 AFRICAN
AFFAIRS

in many parts of tropical Africa farmers had been doing so for a considerable
period before the beginning of colonialrule. This fact is sufficiently acknowl-
edged in the case of West Africa, where the antiquityof marketshas highlighted
the prevalence of food production for exchange in pre-colonial times."1 A
comparableimpressionis unlikely to be conveyed by a reading of the standard
literatureon the rest of tropicalAfrica. Here, one result of the lack of interest
in food productionhas been that historiansof pre-colonialtrade have, until very
recently, concentratedalmost entirely on the scarce mineralresources (salt and
iron) which generatedregionaltrade, and on those items destined for the world
market--especially ivory and slaves. The staples of everydayconsumptionare
usually dismissedas beyond the range of marketdemands.52 Yet all this entre-
preneurialactivitydepended on the productionof a considerablefood surplus-
to support specialist craftsmen and full-time elephant hunters, to supply the
great offshore entrepot of Zanzibar,and above all to feed the tradingcaravans,
sometimes several thousandsstrong, which by the second half of the nineteenth
century were covering every region of tropicalAfrica.53 That food production
on this scale was due to the 'normalsurplus'54of subsistenceagricultureseems a
scarcely credible explanation, though some historians still favour it.5 From
studies of individual societies it is becoming increasinglyclear that before--as
during-the colonial period African cultivators were planning regular food
surplusesin the light of marketdemands.56
The Africanfarmer'spreference for access to the market through food pro-
duction was to some extent allowed for in the case of vegetable oils, which
accounted for such a high proportion of exports from the northern savanna
during the colonial period. In Nigeria both the groundnuts exported from
around Kano and the sesame marketedby the Tiv people had been important
items of domestic consumptionin pre-colonialtimes. In each case the take-off
into export productionbefore 1914 was achieved by indigenousinitiative in the
face of official campaignsto promote cotton-growing. Undoubtedly some of
the appealof these crops lay in their dual role as source of both food and income:
during the great famine of 1913-14, a large proportionof the Kano groundnut
harvestwas eaten ratherthansold.57

51. C. Meillassoux (ed.), The Developmentof Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa
(London, 1971), editor's Introduction,pp. 51-4; Hopkins, EconomicHistory,pp. 53-8.
52. RichardGray & David Birmingham(eds), Pre-Colonial African Trade (London, 1970), p. 4
(all the contributors,including the present writer, in effect subscribedto the editors' view); L. H.
Gann & P. Duignan, 'The pre-colonial economies of sub-SaharanAfrica', in Colonialismin Africa
1870-1960, vol. 4, pp. 52-3.
53. A welcome acknowledgementof this issue is made in Kjekshus, EcologyControl,pp. 120-1.
54. By 'normal surplus' is meant the balance left over in a year of good yield after subsistence
requirementshave been met. Allan, African Husbandman,pp. 38-48.
55. Iliffe, ModernHistory,p. 72.
56. P. Marris & A. Somerset, African Businessmen (London, 1971), p. 39; Tosh, 'Lango
agriculture', pp. 421-2. This conclusion is strongly supported in Hopkins, EconomicHistory, p.
54.
57. Hogendorn, 'Groundnuttrade', pp. 30-51; Dorward, 'UnknownNigerianexport', pp. 432-3.
 REVOLUTION
CASH-CROP IN TROPICAL
AFRICA 91
Yet in the local food economy groundnutsand sesame, althougha significant
source of vegetable protein, were not of primaryimportance:they furnishedthe
sauce or relish, not the bulk of the diet. The real issue was whether the
dominantstarchy staples for which there was no overseas demandcould find a
market nearer home. The answer given by governments was uniformly
negative. Export crops appearedto generate far more revenue than food crops
traded internallycould possibly do; some territorieswere under heavy metro-
politan pressure to produce sought-afterraw materials;and in central Africa, as
Rootsof Rural Povertymakes clear, governmentsintervenedfrom the turn of the
centuryto ensure that opportunitiesto provisionthe non-agriculturalpopulation
(compoundlabour,white townships, etc.) were effectively availableto European
farmersonly. While investment in roads and railwayswas channelledinto the
cash-cropareason a relativelyliberalscale, very little was made availableto areas
of food-producingpotential.58
For would-be food producers, however, the most serious obstacle lay not in
the attitudeof colonialofficialsbut in the state of demand.Priorto the 1930s the
urban and industrialmarket for locally grown foodstuffs was very limited. As
for the cash-crop producers themselves, not even the most successful showed
much inclinationto rely on the market for their subsistence needs during this
period. Sara Berry has recently cast doubt on the earlier assumption that
Yoruba cocoa farmers were purchasing their own food by the Second World
War.59 In fact the only substantialgroup of cash-cropfarmerswhich had ceased
to grow the bulk of its food by this time was the groundnut-growersof Senegal
and Gambia, and their needs were largely met by importedrice.60 Elsewhere,
the vast majorityof cash-cropfarmersin tropicalAfrica remainedwedded to the
attitudes of the part-subsistencecultivator. The major openings for African
food farmersdid not begin to appearuntil the 1940s, with the rapidexpansionof
the urbanpopulation. Only then was the high cost of transportingfood in bulk
offset by a reliable and buoyant demand. Until that point the production of
staple foods for the market was an option which hardly existed for the African
smallholder.

Flaws in the vent-for-surplusmodel

What bearingdoes this discussionhave on the centralassumptionbehind vent-
for-surplus theory as currently applied to Africa--that on the eve of the cash-
crop revolutionthe indigenouseconomiespossessed substantialsurplusesof both
land and labour? Broadly speaking this assumptionholds good for the forest
58. See for example Martin A. Klein, 'Colonial rule and structural change: the case of Sine-
Saloum', in The Political Economy of Underdevelopment:Dependencein Senegal, ed. R. Cruise
O'Brien (London, 1979), pp. 65-99.
59. Berry, Cocoa, pp. 169-71. For the older view, see Forde & Scott, Native Economies,pp.
86-7. The evidence is no more certain in the case of the cocoa-farmersof southern Ghana at this
period.
60. J. Fouquet, 'La traite des arachidesdans le pays de Kaolack', E6tudes
senigalaises8 (1958), pp.
62, 114.
92 AFFAIRS
AFRICAN

areason which most historicalresearchhas concentratedup to now--that is, the

cocoa-and-coffeebelt of coastalWest Africa--and the cotton-and-coffeezone on
the northernand western sides of Lake Victoria.61 Priorto the introductionof
cash crops, the contributionof these areas to world trade had been confined to
variousforms of gathering(palmoil,62wild rubber,ivory and slaves). The male
populationhad either been uninvolvedin agricultureat all--as in Bugandaand
southern Ghana--or else--like the Yorubayam grower--cultivated a compara-
tively undemandingstaple.63 In these societies the men quickly turned their
energies to cash-crop production, in most cases without promptingor pressure
from the government. AlthoughBuganda,Yorubalandand southernGhanaare
now noted for their reliance on migrant wage-labour, the initial success was
invariablyachieved by local labour alone. Productiveresourcescould, indeed,
remainsubstantiallyunderutilizedlong after cash-cropfarminghad become fully
established:in the county of Bwambain Uganda,the adultmale populationin the
1950s still constituted 'the great untapped source for the expansion of
production'after thirtyyearsof coffee-growing.60
Outside the forest, however, the vent-for-surplus model has very limited
application. Research completed to date suggests two ways in which the
productionof crops for export was at odds with theory. In the first, partici-
pation in the export economy was only possible at the cost of abandoningor
curtailing a well-established traffic in foodstuffs. One of the earliest
consequences of the rapid spread of commercial groundnut-growingamong
Hausa farmersin 1912-13 was a drasticcutback in the local supplies of food to
Kano city.65 In northernUganda, the Lango people switched in the course of
just over a decade (c. 1910-23) from being suppliers of oil-seeds (sesame) and
grain to the neighbouringkingdomof Bunyoro, to become one of the principal
cotton-growing peoples of Uganda. During these years the price paid for
cotton rose sharply due to improvements in transport and processing, while
Bunyoro became better able to feed itself. It was these shifts in the market,
ratherthan the continuingpressure of the administration,which determinedthe
spread of cotton-growing in Lango. It would be hard to deny that, from a
materialpoint of view at least, the Langi gained from respondingas they did.
But the relevant considerationhere is that in Lango there was no appreciable
surplus productive capacity waiting to be activated by the stimulus of world
trade. That surplus was already taken up in meeting a regional demand;

61. So far as Ugandais concerned, this means essentially Bugandaand Bugisu; the model does not
hold good for Uganda as a whole, as suggested by some accounts, e.g. Hogendorn, 'Vent-for-
surplus model', p. 21.
62. Palm oil is a marginalcase, since it was producedby 'semi-cultivation'in some parts of coastal
West Africa.
63. It should be noted that the labour requirementsof the yam were considerablymore taxing in
other partsof West Africa.
64. E. H. Winter, BwambaEconomy(Kampala, 1955), p. 44.
65. Hogendorn, 'Groundnuttrade', pp. 42-3; Freund & Shenton, ' "Vent-for-surplus"theory', p.
194.
 REVOLUTION
CASH-CROP IN TROPICAL
AFRICA 93
resources had therefore to be switched from one agriculturalenterprise to
another,andthe transitionwas tense.66
The second way in which the spreadof cash croppingproved inconsistentwith
the vent-for-surplusmodel concernsits impacton subsistenceproduction. This
was most obvious in the groundnutzone of Senegal. By the 1920s groundnuts
were alreadybeginningto take up somethingapproachingthe modernproportion
of two-thirdsof cultivatedland--in sharpcontrastto northernNigeria where the
proportionhas generallyremainedat aroundone third.67 As a result Senegalese
groundnut producers became dependent on imported rice. But Senegal was
unique. It scarcely underminesthe propositionthat tropicalAfrica's output of
export crops in the early colonial period was achieved without any decline in
subsistenceproduction.
However this generalization can only be accepted in a quantitative
sense. For in many cases cash crops were associatedwith a marked deterior-
ation in the quality of diet. The depressive effect of labour migration on
standardsof nutritionin ruralareashas been much studied. Less well known is
the comparableeffect of injudiciouslypromoted cash-crop production. In the
better endowed parts of the savannasuch as southern Hausalandand eastern
Uganda, groundnuts and cotton could still be grown alongside the traditional
grain staples--though even here there was evidence by the mid 1920s that the
yield of millet was adversely affected by cotton's first place in the
rotation.68 But in areas of less well distributed rainfalland poorer soils sub-
sistence productionwas directlyhit. Here the consequenceof pressureto grow
export crops was the abandonmentof traditionallabour-intensivegrain-cropsin
favour of cassava. Since it is highly resistantto droughtand locusts and can be
left in the groundfor up to three years after maturation,cassavais ideally suited
to act as a famine reserve. To this limited end it was promoted by provident
administrationsall over tropicalAfrica. But in those muchmore restrictedareas
where cassavabecame a staplethe decisive factor was the crop's very low labour
requirement,rivalledonly by the plaintain(a crop confined to the forest).69 In
Oubanguithe problemsof combiningcotton with sorghumproved so intractable
that, soon after the introductionof compulsorycotton cultivationin 1926, cassava
had become the dominant food crop.70 Much the same happened in the-
Orientale province of the Belgian Congo and in the Zande district of the
Sudan. The serious consequences of this changeover to cassava--especially as
66. Tosh, 'Langoagriculture',pp. 424-32.
67. Morgan& Pugh, WestAfrica, pp. 483-5; Pdlissier, Payans, p. 566.
68. Uganda Government, Annual Report of the Departmentof Agriculturefor 1926 (Entebbe,
1927).
69. For comparisons between staples, see Bruce F. Johnston, The Staple Food Economies of
WesternTropical Africa (Stanford, 1958), pp. 135-44, and William O. Jones, Manioc in Africa
(Stanford, 1959), pp. 263-4. The rapid diffusion of maize during the colonial period was due to
somewhatsimilarfactors, but the saving in labourwas not so great. See Marvin P. Miracle, Maize in
TropicalAfrica (Madison, 1966).
70. R. Guillemin, 'Evolution de l'agriculture autochtone dans les savanes de l'Oubangui',
Agronomietropical 11 (1956), pp. 299, 301.
94 AFRICAN
AFFAIRS
regards vegetable protein--were soon all too clear to nutritionists.71 In these
areas cash-crop farming was responsible for a decline in living standardsin a
particularlyfundamentalway.72

Conclusion
The purpose of this article has been to shed light on the cash-croprevolution
of the early colonialperiod througha considerationof factorswhich are environ-
mental, rather than social or political in nature. It is not suggested that these
factors should take over the central ground of historicaldebate: this rightfully
belongs to such themes as indigenous entrepreneurship,the immigranttrader,
the transportrevolution,and so on. All that is maintainedis that interpretations
of the cash-croprevolutionneed to be informed--and if necessaryrestrained--
by an awareness of agriculturalrealities on the ground. Geographers and
agriculturalistsmay be surprisedthat it is thought necessaryat this stage in the
debate to bring up such basic issues at all, when their relevance to agricultural
growthis so obviouslycrucial. A readingof recent historicalliteraturesuggests,
however, that a reminderis timely, and that currentinterpretationsof the period
from 1890 to 1930need to be modified.
Contraryto what is often assumedby advocatesof the vent-for-surplustheory
of export growth, the spread of cash-crop agriculturewas not an economically
costless process. Considerationof strictlyagriculturalfactorsshows that, while
surplus land was indeed availablein abundance,labourwas traditionallya scarce
factor in many savannacommunities:for them, cash-crop farming could mean
the abandonmentof older forms of exchange productionwhich imposed fewer
social strains, or a decline in standardsof subsistence. From the colonialpoint
of view, these societies still constitutedan agriculturalsuccess:their surpluspro-
duct was an immediateasset, while its costs were not properly registered until
the last two decades before Independence. But from the perspectiveof African
history, the entry of tropical African societies into cash-crop productionwas a
much more disruptiveexperience than either liberaleconomictheory or colonial
apologeticswould allow.
71. See for example G. M. Culwick, A DietarySurveyamongthe Zande of the SouthwesternSudan
(Khartoum, 1950). Cf. Jones, Manioc, pp. 118-21, 272-3.
72. Since the 1930s cassava has become an increasingly prominent staple in the cocoa-growing
areasof West Africa, but not to the same extent as in the savannaregions discussedhere.