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TAKING STOCK: STATE CONTROL, ETHNIC IDENTITY AND PASTORALIST DEVELOPMENT IN TANGANYIKA, 1948–1958

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2000

DOROTHY L. HODGSON
Affiliation:
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Abstract

In 1951, British colonial administrators in Tanganyika initiated the Masai Development Plan (MDP), a five-year plan whose seemingly innocuous objectives were to build more water supplies, clear tsetse infested bush and experiment with grazing controls and fodder production in a small pilot scheme. But the project was the product of broader British agendas to reassert the legitimacy of empire and rebuild the post-war economy at home and abroad. These modernization agendas reflected a shift in the racialized ethnic premises undergirding the colonial project. Whereas early colonial rule and development had depended on the creation, maintenance and exploitation of ethnic distinctions to institute indirect rule, ethnic differences were now perceived as barriers to modernization. Ethnic groups like Maasai, who had been the target of protectionist sentiments in prior years, were now the focus of heightened attempts by the state to coerce them to adopt modern economic ways. Ironically, however, ethnic differences were both disavowed and reinforced by the plan, for although it was designed to overcome cultural barriers by economic means, it was framed, as its title suggests, by ethnic assumptions about what problems ‘the Maasai’ (as opposed to other ethnic groups) faced in terms of their development.

Despite its claims to merely address technical problems, the MDP was therefore deeply intertwined with colonial imperatives to order, control and compel the progress of their most unruly subjects. At issue were the land, labor, livestock and livelihoods of Maasai people, as well as contested visions of poverty, prosperity and progress. As such, the project served to facilitate, justify and consolidate the expansion of state control into numerous realms of Maasai life and its implementation became the site of deep contestation between administrators and Maasai. Designed in part to build confidence among Maasai in government and development, the project backfired, failing to meet its own objectives and, more ominously, fueling anti-colonial mobilization.

Type
Lessons Learned? Development Experiences in the Late Colonial Period
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Research for this article was supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Research Council of Rutgers University. I am grateful to the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology for permission to carry out the research, Professor C. K. Omari and the University of Dar es Salaam for research affiliation and the staff of the Tanzanian National Archives in both Dar es Salaam and Arusha for their helpful assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the 1997 annual meeting of the African Studies Association. It has benefited from the helpful comments of Rick Schroeder, Monica van Beusekom, an anonymous reader for the Journal of African History and especially Thomas Spear.