Plunder for Profit: A Socio-environmental History of Tobacco Farming in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe(Series Number 162 African Studies)

Exploring over a century of Zimbabwe's colonial and post-colonial history, Elijah Doro investigates the murky and noxious history of that powerful crop: tobacco. In a compelling narrative that debunks previous histories glorifying tobacco farming, Doro reveals the indelible marks that tobacco left on landscapes, communities, and people. Demonstrating that the history of tobacco farming is inseparable from that of colonial encounter, Doro outlines how tobacco became an institutionalised culture of production, which was linked to state power and natural ecosystems, and driven by a pernicious heritage of unbridled plunder. With the destruction of landscapes, the negative impacts of the export trade and the growing tobacco epidemic in Zimbabwe, tobacco farming has a long and varied legacy in southern African and across the world. Connecting the local to the global, and the environmental to the social, this book illuminates our understandings of environmental history, colonialism and sustainability.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1. Global perspectives and local narratives: a socio-environmental history of pioneer tobacco farming in Southern Rhodesia, 1893–1945; 2. The post-war tobacco boom and the development of conservationism in Southern Rhodesia, 1947–1960; 3. A silenced spring? Exploring Africa's 'Rachel Carson moment': A socio-environmental history of the pesticides in tobacco production in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–1980; 4. Beyond agency: The African peasantry, the state and tobacco in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1980; 5. 'The threat of soil erosion is far more permanent than the threat of sanctions': The unilateral declaration of independence, war, and ecological change in tobacco farming landscapes in Southern Rhodesia, 1960–1980; 6. Tobacco control discourses and the tobacco industry in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, 1953–2020; Conclusion.

About the Author :
Elijah Doro is a research fellow at the University of Agder and an environmental historian with an interest in southern Africa. His research on agrarian and environmental histories is inspired by his personal experiences growing up in Zimbabwe's tobacco-farming countryside and participating in the tobacco production economy.

Review :
'Motivated by his childhood experiences growing tobacco, Elijah Doro carefully reconstructs the history of tobacco cultivation in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. The history of the cigarette is an African history and, as Doro deftly shows, it is one that cannot be understood apart from the land, labor, and aspirations of Zimbabweans who have staked their futures-wittingly and unwittingly-on the 'golden crop'.' Sarah Milov, University of Virginia 'Elijah Doro shows us how important historians can be in understanding the slow violence of the Anthropocene. However, he also shows how ordinary men and women survived this new world. This book brings old historiographies into new conversations and is one of the best examples yet of combining political economy and environmental history.' Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University 'I think this important book has at least three merits: it refines and integrates existing historiographies, it resists teleological accounts of environmental history, and it combines all this with a passionate civic engagement.' Giovanni Tonolo, Environment and History