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The East African Sisal Industry, 1929–1949: The Marketing of a Colonial Commodity During Depression and War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Nicholas Westcott
Nicholas Westcott
Affiliation:
London
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Extract

Sisal growing spread rapidly in East Africa during the 1920s and 1930s to become one of the most important export crops in both Kenya and Tanganyika. The sisal industry nevertheless suffered severely from the low prices and erratic commodity markets which characterized the depression. Producers blamed the merchants and merchants blamed the market, but the sisal growers began increasingly to look for ways to bring marketing under their own control in the hope of securing a better return. During the Second World War, state control over the sisal trade enabled producers, through their powerful growers' associations, to exert a greater influence over marketing than ever before. They used this and the dramatic wartime change in market conditions, firstly, to improve the price paid them by the Ministry of Supply and, secondly, to try to consolidate their control over marketing after the war when government purchase ended. In this way they were actively supported by the Colonial Office but vigorously opposed by the London-based merchants and their client growers in East Africa. After a long struggle the independent producers failed to gain the complete control they wanted, but nevertheless considerably strengthened their own hand and reversed a trend towards greater metropolitan control over the sisal industry which had developed during the thirties. Producers could not single-handedly stabilize the market for their commodity, but through concerted action they were able to improve their return from it. The study raises questions about the assumptions behind both liberal and Marxist interpretations of imperial trade and shows that in the case of one of East Africa's most important exports relations between producers and traders were more complex than has been assumed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 445 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 The literature is too large to list, but see, e.g., Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Under-development in East Africa, 1919–1939 (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Swainson, N., The Development of Corporate Capitalism in Kenya, 1918–1977 (London, 1980)Google Scholar; and for a different area and ideological perspective, Bauer, P. T., West African Trade (Cambridge, 1954).Google Scholar For help in collecting the information on which this paper is based I am grateful to the Directors and staffs of the Tanzania National Archives (TNA), Dar es Salaam, and the Public Record Office, Kew (for the Colonial Office (CO) papers), and to Mr J. Hugh Leslie of Wigglesworth & Co. I am also grateful to Professor Fieldhouse and other members of the Development Studies Association seminar for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

2 Harlow, V. and Chilver, E. M. (eds.), History of East Africa, vol. II (Oxford, 1965), 219–236Google Scholar; Iliffe, J., A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 146–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The problems of production are discussed elsewhere. Here I shall concentrate on the questions of financial control and marketing.

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22 Notes of meetings and correspondence in CO 852/311/10 (1940) and CO 852/431/11 (1941).

23 Melville to Caine, 25 Sept. 1941, CO 852/431/11.

24 Believing there were ‘several government officials, entirely ignorant of business but ideologically at war with non-socialist enterprise in all forms’ and whose ‘ignorance was total’ in regard to sisal marketing. I am grateful to Mr Aschan of Wigglesworth's for his reminiscences of this period.

25 Correspondence in CO 852/431/11 and 12. The Ministry sold surplus sisal to the USA on a ‘no profit no loss basis’.

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31 See CO 852/517/6 and CO 852/609/1.

32 Governor's Deputy to C.O., 9 Feb. 1944, CO 852/609/1.

33 Shillidy (M.o.S.) to Helsby (Treasury), 7 Aug. 1943, and Helsby to Shillidy, 18 Aug. 1943, CO 852/517/7.

34 Shillidy to Carstairs, 11 March 1944, CO 852/609/1.

35 Correspondence and meetings, 1946, CO 852/609/3. Minutes by Melville, Jan 1947, CO 852/925/1.

36 Hitchcock to Bretherton (B.o.T.), 20 Jan. 1947, and Melville to Proctor (Treas.), 13 Feb. 1947, CO 852/925/1. Melville to Sandford (CS), 11 March 1947, TNA 16682/1/73. Melville to Leslie (Tanganyika), 8 Jan. 1948, CO 852/925/2.

37 Bretherton to Proctor, 20 May 1946, CO 852/609/3.

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53 J.M.C. meeting with C.O. and B.o.T., 16 Sept. 1947, Report of JMC p. 35.

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55 ‘Minority Report submitted by Mr J. H. S. Tranter’, Report of JMC, p. 84. Creech Jones to Battershill, 12 July 1948 (enclosing record of C.O. meeting with merchants on 11 May), TNA 16682/1/220. Wigglesworth, A., The Future of the Sisal Industry in East Africa (London, 1946Google Scholar; kindly lent me by Mr Leslie).

56 Melville to Surridge, 11 July 1947, and Melville to Sandford, 24 April 1948, TNA 16682/1/77 and 173.

57 Minute by Miller, 6 April 1948, and Leslie to Lockhart, 30 June 1947, TNA 16682/1/31 and 154.

58 CS Tanganyika to C.O., 20 and 26 April 1948, TNA 16682/1/166.

59 TSGA Special meetings, 30 March and 31 May 1948, TNA 29513/111/204 and 213.

60 Yoshida, M., ‘Agricultural marketing reorganization in postwar East Africa’, The Developing Economies XI:3 (1973), 252.Google Scholar Material in CO 852/1165/1 (1950).

61 TSGA to CS, 10 July 1948, TNA 16682/1/218.

62 Little remains of the extravagances of the sisal barons in those years except a few municipal halls and a lot of anecdotes.