The state, conservation and peasant response in colonial Malawi: some preliminary observations, 1920-1964
2012
W. Mulwafu
Malimidwe (conservation) policies in colonial Malawi represented a threat to peasants. These policies interfered with their household economies and restricted local their autonomy. As a reaction, for the first time since the Chilembwe rising of 1915, peasants expressed their opposition against malimidwe programmes. <br /><br />Through an examination of malimidwe policies, the following paper explores peasant responses to an increasingly intrusive colonial state, focusing on the experience of an important conservation scheme developed in the Misuku Hills of Northern N'yasaland in 1939-43. <br /><br />The study shows that: <br /> while nationalist feelings certainly played an important role in peasant reactions, much of their opposition arose from the unbearably heavy amount of labour and time demanded by the state in implementing conservation policies in spite of the capacity that the state had at its disposal to effect change, local circumstances were equally critical in determining the extent of state intervention even the use of traditional authorities as state collaborators in policy implementation did little to bring about radical changes in society and economy conservation was not simply an instrument of state policy to determine the lives of peasants conservation can also be seen as a process in which African themselves adapted to the new and challenging realities of late colonialism hence part of the historical process of peasant transformation in colonial Malawi.<br />
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