Custodians of the Land: Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania (Eastern African Studies)

This volume explores the relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania.In his conclusion, Isaria Kimambo reflects on the efforts of successive historians to strike a balance between external causes of change and local initiative in their interpretations of Tanzanian history. He argues that nationalist and Marxist historians of Tanzanian history, understandably preoccupied through the first quarter-century of the country's post-colonial history with the impact of imperialism and capitalism on East Africa, tended to overlook the initiatives taken by rural societies to transform themselves. Yet, he suggests, there is good reason for historians to think about the causes of change and innovation in the rural communities of Tanzania, because farming and pastoral people have constantly changed as they adjusted to shifting environmental conditions. North America: Ohio U Press; Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota Cover Series Page Title Copyright Contents List of Maps, Figures & Tables List of Photographs Abbreviations Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Custodians of the Land: Ecology & Culture in the History of Tanzania Part One: Environmental & Demographic Change Introduction One: Population: A Dependent Variable Two: Environment & Population Growth: In Ugogo, Central Tanzania Part Two: Environmental Change & Economic History: In Tanzania's Northern Highlands Introduction Three: Environmental Control & Hunger: In the Mountains & Plains of Northeastern Tanzania Four: Nature Reorganized: Ecological History in the Plateau Forests of the West Usambara Mountains 1850-1935 Part Three: Politics & Environmental Change Introduction Five: The Precolonial Politics of Disease Control: In the Lowlands of Northeastern Tanzania Six: 'We Don't Want Terraces!': Protest & Identity under the Uluguru Land Usage Scheme Part Four: Environment & Morality Introduction Seven: Environment, Community & History: 'Nature in the Mind': In Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Buha, Western Tanzania Eight: Canoe-Building Under Colonialism: Forestry & Food Policies in the Inner Kilombero Valley 1920-40 Nine: Struggles for the Land: The Political & Moral Economies of Land on Mount Meru Conclusion Bibliography Index Farming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history. In his conclusion, Isaria N. Kimambo, a founding father of Tanzanian history, reflects on the efforts of successive historians to strike a balance between external causes of change and local initiative in their interpretations of Tanzanian history This volume explores the relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania. It concludes with a reflection on the efforts of historians to strike a balance between external causes of change and local initiative in their interpretations of Tanzanian history.