BOOK REVIEWS 207A Modern Economic History of Africa, Vol. 1: The Nineteenth CenturyBy Tiyambe Zeleza. Dakar, CODESRIA, 1993, viii, 501 pp., ISBN 2-86978-027-3.This book won the 1994 Noma Award and was commended by the judgesas 'an outstanding, pioneering work' which elevates 'the study of Africaneconomic history to a new pedestal'. It is an informative, scholarly andclearly written study which is a welcome and important contribution tothe study of Africa's political economy in the 19th century.The book comprises 15 chapters grouped into five parts, each dealingwith a select theme. Part I, 'Environment and Demographic Change',examines the patterns of climatic change, the ecology of disease,demographic changes in the heyday of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, theprevailing settlement patterns of the time and the ways in which Africansocieties tried to cope with the problems of their time. This section notonly argues persuasively for the importance of the role and impact of theenvironment and demographic changes on the African political economybut also presents an insightful critique of the way in which scholars haveeither misunderstood and misrepresented these forces or have dismissedthem simply as background factors not worthy of serious analysis.Under 'Agricultural Production' in Part II, the focus is on land use,relations of production, agricultural production and the earlymanifestations of European colonial agriculture in South Africa and thePortuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique. Part III focuses onmining and manufacturing and examines, not only the technologies andtechniques used by African societies in developing their mining andmanufacturing industries, but also the predominant relations of productionin these sectors. Part IV concentrates on Africa's domestic and regionaltrade and points out that the over-simplification and generalisations ofexisting scholarship on the nature of Africa's pre-colonial trade cannot bejustified because trade patterns were complex and varied considerablythroughout the 19th century. In Part V an effort is made to document andanalyse both the volume and nature of Africa's international trade and itsrelationship with late 19th century European imperialism.A Modem Economic History of Africa's encyclopaedic wealth of factsand figures about Africa and its incisive criticism of a wide range ofcurrent scholarly writings on Africa's pre-colonial past is clear testimonyto the author's familiarity, not only with his subject matter, but also withthe existent scholarship on a wide range of subjects. Its 51-pagebibliography is, perhaps, the most comprehensive and accessible recordof published and unpublished materials on Africa's pre-colonial pastavailable. In addition, the book offers a refreshingly frank, courageous andinsightful critique of existing scholarship on Africa's pre-colonialexperience, showing how certain myths and misconceptions, generated208 BOOK REVIEWSand sustained by both Western and African scholars, have distorted thecontinent's past.The book argues persuasively, for instance, against the prevailingtrend of treating Sub-Saharan Africa as a separate entity from the rest ofthe continent and charges that this approach, which was born of 'Europeanimperialist arrogance and racism' in the 19th century, is 'a racist constructintended to divorce North Africa from the mainstream of African history'(p. 2). It maintains that the three historical paradigms which havedominated analyses of the African past, namely the Neo-classical,Dependency and Marxist schools, have offered, at times, 'partial, andsometimes misleading, analyses of the process and content of economicchange and development in Africa in the pre-colonial era' (p. 3) and, have,at other times, propagated 'myths and stereotypes' about the Africanpast. The problem has been, it is argued, that scholars in each of theseschools of thought have been over-eager to construct over-arching modelsand theories, which have not been sensitive or applicable to the diversityand complexity of the African experience.The book's own approach is one that, according to the author, isdriven, not by adherence to any 'grand theory or interpretation' nor bythe unsubstantiated assumption that economic history can be fullyunderstood on the basis of the 'markets of neo-classical theorists, theworld system of the dependency writers, or the modes of production ofthe Marxists' (p. 5), but by the fundamental conviction that, ultimately,'economic history is about people, how they produce and reproduce theirdaily lives in their households, communities, societies, states, regions andwithin the continent as a whole' (p. 5). This is not to dismiss the importanceof material and social conditions of production and reproduction butmerely to emphasise the fact that these forces and relations do not operatein a vacuum. Rather they interact in a complex way with 'nature andsociety, men and women, rulers and ruled, locals and foreigners, the pastand the present' (p. 5).Though a welcome and very useful contribution to the growingdiscourse on Africa's pre-colonial past, A Modern Economic History ofAfrica does have one major flaw which arises mainly from its ratherambitious scope; not only encompassing a wide variety of subjects, eachof which would be a legitimate subject of a book on its own, but also anentire continent. In undertaking this multi-subject and continent-widestudy, the author spreads himself thin and runs the risk of making thesame generalisations which he castigates past scholarship for making. Itis, for instance, not always clear whether what applies to the case studiesthat the author uses for his analysis is equally applicable to the wholecontinent throughout the 19th century.BOOK REVIEWS 209The interests of detailed analysis and thorough treatment of issueswould have been better served had the author focused on one or twotopics covering carefully chosen regions of the continent. The continent-wide approach not only produces an unwieldy array of facts which arerather difficult to digest but also results in a voluminous book whoseprice, though not indicated on the book cover, can only be beyond thereach of many potential readers on the African continent for whom,presumably, the book was written.The above shortcoming aside, however, A Modern Economic History ofAfrica is a welcome and valuable contribution to scholarship which raisesthe discourse on the African pre-colonial experience to new heights. It is awell-packaged, competently edited and well-written book which should beof use to professional historians, economic historians, high school teachersand any lay readers who are interested in understanding the forces thatshaped Africa's historical development on the eve of European colonialism.University of Zimbabwe A. S. MLAMBOThe Political Economy of the Sugar Industry in Zimbabwe, 1920-90 ByA 5. Mlambo andE. S. Pangeti. Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications,1996, iv, 90 pp., ISBN 0-908307-43-8, Z$50.The book describes the various stages of growth of the sugar industry inZimbabwe, and the different types of control that are responsible forgetting the industry where it currently is. The authors present theestablishment of the industry by individuals like McDougall, and later bygovernment, and then by international entrepreneurs. The book describesthe operations of the industry during various government regimes andanalyses the impact of international relations on the performance of theindustry. The final chapter looks at the marketing opportunities andconstraints in the region and in distant international markets.While the book illustrates the importance of history for theunderstanding of economic development, the book could be strengthenedby paying more attention to economic, political and institutionalframeworks or paradigms. Several questions can be posed to draw attentionto potential avenues for analysis.The authors readily present reasons given in the reports they reviewed,without providing critical analysis of their own. It seems that theysympathise with the sugar producers. They suggest that the Zimbabwesugar industry is in its infancy (p.l). This is a typical argument forgovernment protection against cheap imports of sugar, but one that doesnot appeal to domestic consumers or tax-payers. Statements like 'domesticretail sugar prices are too low' need some kind of objective justification.