Photo: Sisal Plantation Tranzania (own picture)
Author: Carlin Voss
The plantation and its organizational structure, facilitating colonial exploitation, have cast a long shadow in colonized areas such as Tanzania. An exhaustive definition of the word ‘plantation’ is difficult to give, due to numerous factors regarding topics like degrees of industrialization, labor regime, and property rights (Watts 2009: 542). In general, plantations can be differentiated from other agricultural operations based on “size, authority structure, crop or labour force characteristics” (ibid.: 543). The study of plantations and the power structures that were simultaneously established must entail a reflection on the position of plantations in their wider social context as well as in their relation to the history of exploitation and capitalist accumulation.
During the period of German colonization, the area that is now Tanzania came to a position of immense significance regarding the international trade of sisal fiber (Sabea 2008: 411). The number “of sisal plantations rose from 1 in 1893 to 54 by 1913, and production jumped from a mere 0.6 tons in 1898 to 20,835 tons in 1913, comprising almost 30 percent of the total value of GEA [German East Africa] exports” (ibid.).
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