Agrarian Change and Commercialisation in Nyasaland: A Tentative Discussion from the Perspective of Mzimba District, 1938-1963

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Periodical article

Title:	Agrarian Change and Commercialisation in Nyasaland: A Tentative Discussion from the Perspective of Mzimba District, 1938-1963
Author:	Green, Erik
Year:	2005
Periodical:	South African Journal of Economic History
Volume:	20
Issue:	1
Period:	March
Pages:	18-39
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Malawi
Subjects:	small farms agricultural policy 1940-1949 1950-1959 Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Economics and Trade colonialism History and Exploration Politics and Government
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/10113430509511177
Abstract:	This essay focuses on the structure and change of the smallholder farming communities in the Mzimba district of northern Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) where the commercial estate sector was not established before the 1970s. The underlying argument is that the process of change in the Mzimba district can be described as an increased commercialization and that this process has to be understood in terms of changes in the cultivators' access to productive resources (land, labour and capital) and markets. Markets and capital were the two most important factors in the commercialization process and in both cases the State played a significant role in increasing their availability. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]