The Food Economy and French Colonial Rule in Central Cameroun

Bibliographic Data

ID8977314
AuthorsJane I Guyer (Africa Center, corresponding author)
Year1978
Volume19
Issue4
Pages577-597
Publication date1978-10-01
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/s0021853700016492
OpenAlexW2068482059
LanguageEN
Citations received46
References cited16

French administrative policies during the inter-war period in Central Cameroun created a class of indigenous chiefs who fulfilled crucial functions in the mobilization of manpower and resources from the rural areas for the development of the European sector of the economy. Early problems in organizing food markets to provision the growing non-agricultural sector resulted in a decision to channel agricultural growth through the chiefs rather than to leave it to market forces. The institution of a food requisition system involved the administration in exercising direct control over key aspects of the rural economy through the regulation of production, price control, control of the trading network, and the use of the indigénat to support the rights of chiefs over their subjects. The system succeeded in achieving two purposes at once: it guaranteed a cheap, reliable supply of food to the wage-earning population, thus allowing wages to remain low and stable; and it encouraged the development of a class of wealthy planters in the rural areas whose self-interest lay in support for the colonial administration. However, close control of the economy became impossible in the late 1930s, and the government's dissatisfaction with some of the implications of its own chieftaincy policy resulted in the abandonment of the whole inter-war system. The rural economy which gradually emerged after 1946 was characterized by family-based production units but lacked a well-developed institutional framework appropriate to it

Abandonment (legal · Administration (probate law · Agricultural productivity · Agriculture · Colonialism · Economic growth · Economic policy · Economics · Economy · Geography · Government (linguistics · Indigenous · Market economy · Peasant · Political science · Population · Sociology · Wage · African history and culture studies · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Law

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