The Political Economy of Settler States in Africa

Salih O. Noor

University of Chicago

snoor@uchicago.edu

​

Alex Dyzenhaus

University of St Andrews

apd20@st-andrews.ac.uk

Outline

1. Motivation
2. What is Settler Colonialism?
3. Typology
4. Cases
1. Kenya
2. South Africa
3. Angola/ Mozambique
5. Conclusions

Motivation

We understand the African colonial state quite well as an object of extraction (Young 1994; Mamdani 1996; Eisenstadt, Abitbol, and Chazan 1988; Chabal 1986; Bayart 2009; Herbst 2000)

• “Hegemony on a Shoestring” (Berry 1992), indirect vs. rule
• Colonialism either seen as fused with or reshaping customary societies in favour of extractive purposes

But settler states created unique institutions that exclusively served a small European population (Mkandawire 2010, Paine 2019)

• A different kind of violence than merely extractive colonialism
• Larger taxation base
• Rural rather than urban bias
• Racially exclusive developmentalism and welfare provision

Argument

African Settler States are:

1. Distinct from classic majority settler states
2. Distinct from classic African extractive colonies
3. Have their own internal variation, which affects independence movements and long-term outcomes

Typology of African Settler States

Studies of Settler Colonialism

Studies of settler states focus on Oceania, Americas have two approaches

• New institutional economics (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001; Engerman and Sokoloff 2002)
• Settler colonial studies (Osterhammel 2005; Fieldhouse 1967; Mamdani 1996; Clarence-Smith 1985; Veracini 2010)

Settler colonialism seen as violently importing/transplanting settler institutions into indigenous societies: displacing, replacing, assimilating (Veracini 2024)

African settler states and colonialism in Africa was never quite strong enough to fully displace indigenous institutions: too few settlers. But that does not mean they are just “colonies with settlers” (Youé 2018)

Instead, settler colonialism here is more a pattern of binary settler/native competition, land alienation and institutionalised domination (Mamdani 1998, Elkins and Pederson 2005)

What is excluded?

Trying to think beyond Southern Africa

​

1. Non French/English Africa
1. Italian (Eritrea, Libya), Portuguese (Angola, Mozambique)
2. French North African colonies
1. Algeria, Tunisia
4. Assumed “extractive” colonies
• Zambia, Malawi, Eswatini
5. “Near” settler colonies
1. Tanzania, Botswana

​

Paine 2019

African Settler State

Our definition

1. Minimum population of European-heritage settlers
2. Alienation of arable land (Amin 1972) for European farming
3. Institutional Dualism: support of this farming community at the expense of indigenous agriculture
1. (Berry 1993; Frankema, Green, and Hillbom 2016; Mamdani 1996; Austin 2015; Mosley 1983; Morapedi 2014; Youé 2002)

Table 1: The Proportion of Settler Population and Land Alienation in the Late-Colonial Period

Potts 2012

Typology

Table 5: Four categories of African settler states and political economies

Two sets of questions

​

1) What is the predominant mode of production domestic European settler society? Is it primarily agrarian? Or is it mixed?

​

2) What is the relationship between the settlers and the metropole? Is it pluralist/autonomous or corporatist/dependent?

​

​

Typology

Axis 1: Mode of Production

• Agrarian economies: Largely reliant on agriculture
• Mixed economies: Reliant in part on urban industry or mining

​

Agrarian economies: indigenous agriculture vs European agriculture (Frankema, Green, and Hillbom 2016, Morapedi 2014, Mosley 1983, Arrighi 1970)

​

Mixed economies: reliant on indigenous labour

Typology

Axis 2: Autonomy (McNamee 2023)

• Autonomy: contestation
• Interest groups: settlers battle metropole for resources/power
• Limited Autonomy
• Top down corporatism: metropole curbs settlers

​

Ideology of metropole

• Determines to what extent the metropole backs settler parochial interests

Typology

Table 5: Four categories of African settler states and political economies

Relevant outcomes:

• Anti-colonial struggles
• Contemporary development
• Wealth inequality

​

Not merely a question of: “how many settlers?” (Frankema, Green, and Hillbom 2016)

​

Rather: how do settlers organise as interest groups against both indigenous development and metropolitan goals?

Kenya: Overpowered Farmers in an Agrarian Economy

• 0.85% of the population, 7% of the land, 25% of the arable land
• Early settlers campaign for preferential agricultural policies vs. indigenous agriculture (Leys 1975)
• Kenyan farmers’ importance in UK war economies increased their power (Youé 1988)
• But no real industry develops (Leys 1975)

​

Survey of Kenya, 1936

Kenya: Agricultural Competition and Metropolitan Interests

• Early signs that the metropole doubted settlers in the creation of larger reserves (Sorrenson 1968)
• However, it was forced to support them given the pluralist nature of the settler colony – settlers had maintained control due to the war effort
• Colonial goals of primary resource extraction: tea, sisal, coffee
• “The Kenyan settlers were an increasingly expensive instrument for achieving those goals” (Wasserman 1976, p.23)
• Would have preferred a plantation style economy with indigenous labour, but settlers frustrated this
• Policies that favour settler agriculture lead to rebellion (Kenya Land and Freedom Army, or Mau Mau) (Berman and Lonsdale 1992)

​

Survey of Kenya Settlement Schemes

Kenya: Settler Withdrawal and Land Reform

• British negotiated exit, finally abandon settlers
• European farmers in the highlands sell their land back to the state and leave
• Large agricultural reforms to promote African agriculture and continue production of key resources
• Maintains large sisal, coffee and tea estates under multinational ownership
• Land politics determined by post-colonial clientelism, inter-ethnic tension (Kanyinga 2000, Boone 2014)

Tea farms in Bomet, Kenya

South Africa: Autonomy and Industry

• South Africa is the most “settled” African Settler State
• ~20% of the population alienate 87% of the land
• But they also move quickly into a mining and industrialised economy
• Unites urban white Anglophone interests with rural white Afrikaner interests against both the metropole and indigenous agriculture (Marx 1998, Bundy 1972)
• “Alliance of maize and gold” (Morell 1988)

South Africa, a Land Divided (Walt, 1982)

South Africa: Settler Alliance and Maintenance

• Power of settlers wasn’t just in the “numbers”, but in the cross-class alliance and coalition
• Settlers resist metropole, independence
• Settlers comprehensively control Black and indigenous labour and suppress nascent Black agriculture

A land reform farmer and his mentors in the Free State, South Africa

Protracted Land Reform and Unchanged Agriculture

Post-independence: massive land inequality, protracted land reform, dominant settler politics and continued inequality

​

Settler mode of production still predominates in commercial agriculture – in contrast Kenya’s land reform re-arranges much of Kenya’s agricultural production on the foundations of the settler agricultural state

​

Land Reform in Two of South Africa’s Provinces

Angola and Mozambique: Subordinated Settlers

• Early colonialism: prazos, semi feudal estates/concessions for cash crops
• 20^th century Estado Novo: highly centralised, fascist state
• Encouraged both settler agriculture and local quotas for indigenous agriculture (Duffy 1962)

Differences in Agricultural Competition and Settlement

• Portuguese colonies seen as a vent for excess Portuguese labour and agricultural production in a near pre-capitalist mode
• Integrationist political view: assimilate indigenous population rather than separate them
• Agriculture evolved in parallel spheres between settler and indigenous areas, but still preference for settler ventures
• Lower racially based inequalities and conflict within the Settler State
• But massive conflict between the metropole and colony

​

​

Post-colonial outcomes

• Massive conflicts in the post-colonial era: Civil wars, weak and fragile states
• Neocolonialism: metropoles + African settler states are in part to blame
• But one can also connect instability to colonial legacies
• At times, these states acted like extractive colonial states with a greater European population to enforce the rule and resist independence movements
• But fundamentally, due to their reliance on the metropole, colonialism ended abruptly – unlike the long, drawn-out independence sagas of more “pluralist” settler states

​

Conclusions

The African Settler State is its own unique concept

Distinct from a) settler states globally and b) other African colonial projects

Further, distinctions within African Settler States mattered for post-independence development

• Does not mean settlement was beneficial
• Rather, we can understand variation and political development in these states based on the political economy of colonialism and settlement

Settler strength not a question of “how many settlers?”, but of how they organise themselves vis a vis the metropole and the indigenous population

Leads to distinct outcomes in terms of decolonisation, post-independence land reform/inequality