Ian Phimister
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 137527 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Ian Phimister |
| NOMBRES | Ian |
| APELLIDO | Phimister |
| FIRMA | PHIMISTER I |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Cape Town |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 56 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 276 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 54 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1974 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
A Boxing Legacy
A long-overdue tribute to legendary African American sportswriter and boxing cartoonist Ted Carroll. Ted Carroll was one of the greatest American artists and sportswriters of the twentieth century, most notably as a boxing cartoonist and journalist. As a Black man working in an era when boxing was one of the few outlets where Black athletes could achieve wealth, success, and recognition, Carroll’s commentary on the sport provides a profound persp…
Profiling the Greats
Dr Ivo Mhike (1982 - 2021)
The son of Mr Cletos Mhike and Mrs Christine Mhike, Ivo Mhike did his first degree at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) between 2002 and 2005, winning book prizes on two occasions for the Best Student. While working as a Teaching Assistant from 2006 onwards, he completed his Masters. Both degrees were in African Economic History. Ivo then lectured at UZ until the end of 2012, when, in the face of stiff international competition, he won a PhD studen…
Secondary Industry and Settler Colonialism
The causes, course and consequences of the unilateral declaration of independence [UDI] by Southern Rhodesia have generated a large scholarly literature. Less frequently accounted for is the growth of the Colony's secondary industrial sector, for a time the most sophisticated in Africa north of the Limpopo. Almost entirely lacking is analysis of the relationship, structural and political, between the two. Without an already existing secondary ind…
Secondary Industry and Settler Colonialism
The causes, course and consequences of the unilateral declaration of independence [UDI] by Southern Rhodesia have generated a large scholarly literature. Less frequently accounted for is the growth of the Colony’s secondary industrial sector, for a time the most sophisticated in Africa north of the Limpopo. Almost entirely lacking is analysis of the relationship, structural and political, between the two. Without an already existing secondary ind…
Wage labor in historical perspective
This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically a…
Late nineteenth-century globalization
In southern Africa the portal of globalization opened by finance capital towards the end of the nineteenth century frequently turned on mining speculation. A particularly notorious case was that of the Ayrshire mine in Southern Rhodesia's Lomagundi district. Touted in its heyday as the richest gold prospect in the entire southern half of the continent, the Ayrshire's corporate existence was characterized by company-mongering and market manipulati…
A Zambian Town in Colonial Zimbabwe
In March 1964 the entire African labour force at Wankie Colliery, “Wangi Kolia”, in Southern Rhodesia went on strike. Situated about eighty miles south-east of the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, central Africa’s only large coalmine played a pivotal role in the region’s political economy. Described by Drum , the famous South African magazine, as a “bitter underpaid place”, the colliery’s black labour force was largely drawn from outside colo…
Climate Variability and Societal Dynamics in Pre-Colonial Southern African History (AD 900-1840)
The role of climate variability in pre-colonial southern African history is highly disputed. We here provide a synthesis and critique of climate-society discourses relating to two regionally-defining periods of state formation and disaggregation. The first period involves the eleventh-thirteenth century development of socio-political complexity and the rise of southern Africa's first state, Mapungubwe, followed by its collapse and the shift in re…
Narratives of progress
This brief commentary takes its inspiration from the opening address delivered by \nJohn Hoffman, and printed in these pages; that is, progress is usefully understood \nas a contradictory, contested and ambiguous process. But rather than attempt a \ncomprehensive survey of the past 40 or so years of academic analyses of \nZimbabwe’s pasts, what follows has as its focus the emergence of ‘patriotic \nhistory’ and particularly its nationalist antece…
Economic development of Africa, 1880–1939, 1
Proletarians In Paradise
Drawing on J.F. Holleman and S. Biesheuvel's extensive survey of 'The Attitudes of White Mining Employees towards Life and Work on the Copperbelt', this chapter outlines the historiography and historical sociology of a racially-bounded aristocracy of labour. Described as a paradise for the proletariat, the Copperbelt provided employment for over 7,000 white miners during a crucial period of its history. By contrast to journalistic accounts, acade…
Empire and globalisation
The Collapse of Rhodesia. Population Demographics and the Politics of Race
The Collapse of Rhodesia. Population Demographics and the Politics of Race J. Brownell London, I.B. Taurus, 2011 viii + 241 pp., ISBN: 978 1 84885 475 8 (£56.50 hardback) In February 1980, a huge c
Workers in Wonderland? White Miners and the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, 1946–1962
Described as a paradise for the proletariat, the Northern Rhodesian [Zambian] Copperbelt provided employment for over 7 000 white miners. Emerging from the end of the Second World War with a ‘closed shop’ agreement, the white Northern Rhodesian Mine Workers Union fought a series of battles against the Copperbelt's two major mining houses, Anglo American and the Rhodesian Selection Trust. The latter company in particular has been portrayed as havi…
Corporate Profit and Race in Central African Copper Mining, 1946–1958
The focus in the literature on the political outcomes of decolonization has resulted in neglect of the business activities that took place from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. Missing from existing accounts are the occasions when business turned impending political change to economic advantage. One such shift occurred in the central African copper-mining industry as, first, the promise of racial “partnership” during the short-lived Federation of …
Zimbabwe is Mine”
Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe. A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980–1988. Introduction by Elinor Sisulu. Foreward by Archbishop Pius Ncube. London, Hurst, 2007. 448 pp. (pbk
Defining the'China Question
Between 1894 and 1905, the most pressing international issue was the'China Question', argues T.G. Otte, author of the important book at the centre of this essay review. For Otte, China's'future development, indeed survival, was the most complex problem facing the Great Powers outside Europe', but because his study turns on interrogating the'official mind' of late Victorian and Edwardian imperialism, there is a sense in which it shares certain of …
The Engineering of Herbert Hoover
This article offers a revisionist account of Herbert Hoover's career as a mining engineer, looking particularly at his activities in Australia and China where he first established his reputation and his fortune. The young Hoover went to Western Australia in 1897 to work for the British firm of Bewick, Moreing. Hoover's employers sent him to China in early 1899. He became a partner two years later and returned to Australia to direct Bewick, Morein…
Foreign Devils, Finance and Informal Empire
An imperial policy is essentially a commercial policy'(Charles Addis, 1905)'Look at the way we have swindled the Chinese in the case of the Pekin Syndicate and still worse in the case of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company'(G.E. Morrison, 1906
Rambai Makashinga (Continue to Endure)’
(2005). ‘Rambai Makashinga (Continue to Endure)’: Zimbabwe's Unending Crisis. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 112-126
The Absent-Minded Imperialists
The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain. By BERNARD PORTER (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2004; pp. xvii + 475. £25). ‘WE seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind’, famously observed J.R. Seeley. Far from purporting to explain the causes of British expansion overseas, this sarcastic remark was in fact referring to the contemporary neglect of imperial history in schools and u…
Zimbabwe Now
Mugabe, Mbeki & the politics of anti-imperialism
There can be little doubt that one of the most significant aspects of the current crisis in Zimbabwe, especially the events of the past two or three years, has been its international character. At the heart of President Robert Mugabe's offensive against the array of forces opposed to his rule are repeated attempts to place the Zimbabwe problem at the centre of a larger anti-imperialist and Pan-African position. These tactics have been crucial to …
Mining, Engineers and Risk Management
Zimbabwe Now
The political economy of tribal animosity
'Faction fights' and urban disturbances have been an almost permanent feature of southern and central African ghetto life since the late 19th century, yet with few exceptions they have never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. The fact that they have been dismissed by a historian as 'brutal inter-tribal riots', or simply ignored by anthropologists and sociologists is clearly far from satisfactory. If 'faction fights' were and are so blatantly 't…
Meat and Monopolies
This paper discusses the history of the beef cattle industry in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and 1938, but does so within the context of the world meat trade in order to examine the relationship between local and international capital. While certain entrepreneurs early recognized Southern Rhodesia as a potentially valuable beef cattle country, full realization of this hinged on breaking into the world meat market dominated by a few large cold s…
Mugabe, Mbeki & the politics of anti-imperialism
There can be little doubt that one of the most significant aspects of the current crisis in Zimbabwe, especially the events of the past two or three years, has been its international character. At the heart of President Robert Mugabe's offensive against the array of forces opposed to his rule are repeated attempts to place the Zimbabwe problem at the centre of a larger anti-imperialist and Pan-African position. These tactics have been crucial to …
White miners in historical perspective
(1977). White miners in historical perspective: Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1953. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 187-206
Rethinking the reserves
As new archival evidence becomes available, so the history of the 1950s is likely to be the subject of major revision. By reviewing existing studies of one of this period's key features, notably the Land Husbandry Act, this article suggests a number of ways in which the subject might be opened up by future research. It argues that the actual impact of the Land Husbandry Act may have been overestimated, at the same time as the extent of differenti…
Accommodating Imperialism
Although Southern Rhodesia's settler minority won responsible government from Britain in 1923, it was on terms circumscribed by the interests of metropolitan accumulation. As the dependent partner, Southern Rhodesia was obliged to accept constitutional provisions seeking to guard against initiatives which might disturb that process. Consequently, the settler state found itself hamstrung when it tried to gain some say over how the railway system o…
Discourse and the discipline of historical context
William Beinart's recent study of soil erosion, conservationism and ideas about development in southern Africa argues that the 'set of ideas and prescriptions associated with conservationist thinking' was a 'deeply rooted element in. . . official thinking about agrarian society in the first half of the twentieth century'. More specifically these ideas were 'invoked, elaborated and applied. . . first in relation to settler, then also peasant, agri…
Peasant Production and Underdevelopment in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1914
Journal Article PEASANT PRODUCTION AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA, 1890–1914 Get access I. R. PHIMISTER I. R. PHIMISTER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 73, Issue 291, April 1974, Pages 217–228, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096469 Published: 01 April 1974
Rhodes, Rhodesia and the Rand
(1974). Rhodes, Rhodesia and the Rand. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 74-90
Corporate Profit and Race in Central African Copper Mining, 1946–1958
The focus in the literature on the political outcomes of decolonization has resulted in neglect of the business activities that took place from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. Missing from existing accounts are the occasions when business turned impending political change to economic advantage. One such shift occurred in the central African copper-mining industry as, first, the promise of racial “partnership” during the short-lived Federation of …
Kana sora ratswa ngaritswe
For almost two weeks in April 1948 colonial Zimbabwe's two major cities, as well as smaller towns, mines and farms were convulsed by mass unrest. Although the causes of the General Strike have long been recognised as having their origins in the urban squalor and rampant inflation of the immediate post-war era, there is little agreement about either its organisation or its significance. Recent interventions in the debate have tended to strengthen …
Foreign Devils, Finance and Informal Empire
An imperial policy is essentially a commercial policy'(Charles Addis, 1905)'Look at the way we have swindled the Chinese in the case of the Pekin Syndicate and still worse in the case of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company'(G.E. Morrison, 1906
Mining, Engineers and Risk Management
The Economic Decline of Zimbabwe
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Wage labor in historical perspective
This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically a…
Climate Variability and Societal Dynamics in Pre-Colonial Southern African History (AD 900-1840)
The role of climate variability in pre-colonial southern African history is highly disputed. We here provide a synthesis and critique of climate-society discourses relating to two regionally-defining periods of state formation and disaggregation. The first period involves the eleventh-thirteenth century development of socio-political complexity and the rise of southern Africa's first state, Mapungubwe, followed by its collapse and the shift in re…
Workers in Wonderland? White Miners and the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, 1946–1962
Described as a paradise for the proletariat, the Northern Rhodesian [Zambian] Copperbelt provided employment for over 7 000 white miners. Emerging from the end of the Second World War with a ‘closed shop’ agreement, the white Northern Rhodesian Mine Workers Union fought a series of battles against the Copperbelt's two major mining houses, Anglo American and the Rhodesian Selection Trust. The latter company in particular has been portrayed as havi…
Corners and company‐mongering
(2000). Corners and company‐mongering: Nigerian tin and the city of London, 1909–12. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 23-41
The Chrome Trust
This article is concerned to trace the origins, development and structure of chrome mining and marketing. It pays close attention to the key role played by Edmund Davis in the creation, particularly after the First World War, of an international cartel. At the same time, this paper also examines the issue of market considerations versus technological pressures in the growth of extractive industries, as well as the extent to which global patterns …
Unscrambling the Scramble for Southern Africa
Commodity relations and class formation in the Zimbabwean countryside, 1898-1920
By disaggregating the peasantry, this article seeks to explain the variety of experience uncovered by previous local studies of the Zimbabwean countryside. A combination of those pockets of pre-colonial accumulation which had survived the violence of the 1890s, and the productive reinvestment of income earned in wage labour, gave rise to a distinctive pattern of rural differentiation. By the start of the 1920s a class of small farmers had emerged
Alluvial gold mining and trade in Nineteenth-Century South Central Africa
For over nine hundred years the African inhabitants of South Central Africa engaged in the production and trading of gold. The attention of archaeologists and historians, however, has focused mainly on gold reef mining. By comparison, alluvial goldwashing has been neglected, although it was practised by Africans both before and after the period during which they exploited gold reef mines. Probably at its greatest volume between the twelfth and fi…
Narratives of progress
This brief commentary takes its inspiration from the opening address delivered by \nJohn Hoffman, and printed in these pages; that is, progress is usefully understood \nas a contradictory, contested and ambiguous process. But rather than attempt a \ncomprehensive survey of the past 40 or so years of academic analyses of \nZimbabwe’s pasts, what follows has as its focus the emergence of ‘patriotic \nhistory’ and particularly its nationalist antece…
The Collapse of Rhodesia. Population Demographics and the Politics of Race
The Collapse of Rhodesia. Population Demographics and the Politics of Race J. Brownell London, I.B. Taurus, 2011 viii + 241 pp., ISBN: 978 1 84885 475 8 (£56.50 hardback) In February 1980, a huge c
Alluvial gold mining and trade in Nineteenth-Century South Central Africa
For over nine hundred years the African inhabitants of South Central Africa engaged in the production and trading of gold. The attention of archaeologists and historians, however, has focused mainly on gold reef mining. By comparison, alluvial goldwashing has been neglected, although it was practised by Africans both before and after the period during which they exploited gold reef mines. Probably at its greatest volume between the twelfth and fi…
Peasant Production and Underdevelopment in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1914
Journal Article PEASANT PRODUCTION AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA, 1890–1914 Get access I. R. PHIMISTER I. R. PHIMISTER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 73, Issue 291, April 1974, Pages 217–228, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096469 Published: 01 April 1974
Rhodes, Rhodesia and the Rand
(1974). Rhodes, Rhodesia and the Rand. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 74-90
Crown and Charter
Journal Article Crown and Charter: the early years of the British South Africa Company Get access Crown and Charter: the early years of the British South Africa Company, by John S. Galbraith. University of California Press, 1974. xi+354pp. Bibliography, index. £7.00. I. R. PHIMISTER I. R. PHIMISTER University of Zambia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 75, Issue 298, January 1976, Pag…
The Reconstruction of the Southern Rhodesian Gold Mining Industry, 1903-10
White miners in historical perspective
(1977). White miners in historical perspective: Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1953. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 187-206
Meat and Monopolies
This paper discusses the history of the beef cattle industry in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and 1938, but does so within the context of the world meat trade in order to examine the relationship between local and international capital. While certain entrepreneurs early recognized Southern Rhodesia as a potentially valuable beef cattle country, full realization of this hinged on breaking into the world meat market dominated by a few large cold s…
Books reviewed
Charles Brownlee, Reminiscences of Kafir Life and History (Killie. Campbell Africana Library, Facsimile reproduction of second edition (1916), with an Introduction, Notes, and Index by C. Saunders, University of Natal Press, 1977.) Gwendolen Carter and Patrick O'Meara, Southern Africa in Crisis, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London, 1977. 279pp. £9.35 J. Mutero Chirenje, Chief Kgama and his Times c. 1835–1923: The Story of a Southern …
The political economy of tribal animosity
'Faction fights' and urban disturbances have been an almost permanent feature of southern and central African ghetto life since the late 19th century, yet with few exceptions they have never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. The fact that they have been dismissed by a historian as 'brutal inter-tribal riots', or simply ignored by anthropologists and sociologists is clearly far from satisfactory. If 'faction fights' were and are so blatantly 't…
Books reviewed
George Frederickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), xxv + 356 pp. £12.50 Maurice Nyagumbo, With the People: an autobiography from the Zimbabwe struggle (London, Allison & Busby, 1980, pp. 248, £9.95. £3.95 p/b). J. A. C. Mutambirwa, The Rise of Settler Power in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 1898–1923 (New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980, pp. …
Pasi ne (Down With) Class Struggle? The New History for Schools in Zimbabwe
The struggle by the people of Zimbabwe to overthrow Ian Smith's Rhodesian regime in the 1970s won the support and gripped the imagination of democratic peoples around the world. As the struggle intensified, so it began to move away from nationalism towards liberation. Control of the state was no longer seen as an end in itself. For the vision of a socialist Zimbabwe to become reality, the state would have to be fundamentally restructured. The pac…
Accommodating Imperialism
Although Southern Rhodesia's settler minority won responsible government from Britain in 1923, it was on terms circumscribed by the interests of metropolitan accumulation. As the dependent partner, Southern Rhodesia was obliged to accept constitutional provisions seeking to guard against initiatives which might disturb that process. Consequently, the settler state found itself hamstrung when it tried to gain some say over how the railway system o…
Labor and Capital on the African Copperbelt
Studies, UNIP headquarters, and the Zambian Mineworkers' Union headquarters in Kitwe, produced various pieces of useful data.A. L. Epstein and J. Clyde Mitchell's data from 1950s Copperbelt surveys were particularly helpful.Both scholars graciously permitted me to examine these records during a recent visit to England.Numerous informants in England, Zambia, South Africa, and America gave generously of their time and memories, and this study could…
Discourse and the discipline of historical context
William Beinart's recent study of soil erosion, conservationism and ideas about development in southern Africa argues that the 'set of ideas and prescriptions associated with conservationist thinking' was a 'deeply rooted element in. . . official thinking about agrarian society in the first half of the twentieth century'. More specifically these ideas were 'invoked, elaborated and applied. . . first in relation to settler, then also peasant, agri…
Commodity relations and class formation in the Zimbabwean countryside, 1898-1920
By disaggregating the peasantry, this article seeks to explain the variety of experience uncovered by previous local studies of the Zimbabwean countryside. A combination of those pockets of pre-colonial accumulation which had survived the violence of the 1890s, and the productive reinvestment of income earned in wage labour, gave rise to a distinctive pattern of rural differentiation. By the start of the 1920s a class of small farmers had emerged
South Africa's City of Diamonds
An economic and social history of Zimbabwe, 1890-1948
Historians and the Big Hole
Secondary industrialisation in Southern Africa
Understanding of the process and pattern of post‐war industrialisation in colonial Zimbabwe can be significantly enhanced by paying close attention to the 1948 Customs Agreement between Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Keen to expand and consolidate an export trade already worth over £10 million per annum by 1948, the South African authorities were prepared to foster industrial development north of the Limpopo precisely because the Southern Rh…
Coal, Crisis, and Class Struggle
Despite its pivotal economic position in Central Africa, the history of Zimbabwe's Wankie Colliery has scarcely been explored. Although the historical pattern of capital accumulation and class struggle on the colliery has yet to be traced in any detail, this article suggests that a useful starting point is the protracted labour crisis which convulsed the colliery in 1918. Attempts to expand output through intensified pressure on a dwindling suppl…
Unscrambling the Scramble for Southern Africa
Rethinking the reserves
As new archival evidence becomes available, so the history of the 1950s is likely to be the subject of major revision. By reviewing existing studies of one of this period's key features, notably the Land Husbandry Act, this article suggests a number of ways in which the subject might be opened up by future research. It argues that the actual impact of the Land Husbandry Act may have been overestimated, at the same time as the extent of differenti…
Lashers and Leviathan
In 1953 Southern Rhodesia's (Zimbabwe's) only coal mine, Wankie Colliery, was taken over by the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa. The colliery's new owners soon discovered that the elimination of “hand lashing” (shovelling of coal) was the key to better productivity and expanded output. Coal cutting machinery was installed wherever possible, but in the colliery's two oldest shafts existing mining methods were too deeply entrenched and c…
Zimbabwe in the 1930s - Das koloniale Zimbabwe in der Krise
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Comrades Compromised
At the end of April (1992), President Mugabe was given a rough ride at the inaugural conference of the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association. Almost half of the some 36,000 veterans are unemployed, and Mugabe had to listen to accusations that his government was run by 'opportunists and bourgeois elements' who want to exclude the veterans.1Mr Mandela was himself booed (in April 1993) when he defended his partnership with Mr De Klerk. PAC le…
Political science (45 obras) · History (37 obras) · African history and culture studies (33 obras) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (33 obras) · History (30 obras) · Law (30 obras) · Law (28 obras) · Economics (25 obras) · Politics (19 obras) · Economic history (18 obras)