Economics and Ethnicity

The Italian Community in Malawi

Bibliographic Data

ID8977253
AuthorsJohn Mccracken (0000-0001-6945-4762, University of Stirling, corresponding author)
Year1991
Volume32
Issue2
Pages313-332
Publication date1991-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853700025743
OpenAlexW2091021364
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited28

This article focuses on the Italian community in Malawi, one of the smallest immigrant minority groups in Central Africa, but by no means the least important. Using the records of the Custodian of Enemy Property housed in the National Archives of Malawi, it suggests that, in the light of the Italian experience, there is need to modify the conventional view of the white farming sector as being uniformly inefficient and incapable of survival other than through the active support of the colonial state. At a time between the wars when capitalist farming as a whole was in deep depression, Ignaco Conforzi succeeded for reasons largely unconnected with the intervention of the state, in creating a highly profitable, diversified agricultural empire which survived the Second World War virtually intact. Through his influence, an Italian community was created, linked to Conforzi by a variety of economic and family ties and drawn largely from the same small area of central Italy from which he himself had come. Like members of other ethnic groups, these immigrants were constantly balancing their multiple identities – as whites, as farmers or mechanics, as Italians or as natives of a particular district in Italy. Between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s external and internal forces combined to transform them into a classic minority, ‘singled out...for differential and unequal treatment’ but from the late 1940s onwards those who were regarded by the colonial authorities as conforming to European standards were reabsorbed within the wider settler community. Overall, however, they tended to be more skilled and, crucially, less heavily reliant on the state than were British settlers and it is these factors that explain their relative success

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