Political Economy in Southern Rhodesia: Land apportionment as a method for establishing a settlers' economy

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject History - Africa, grade: B, La Trobe University Melbourne, language: English, abstract: A settler society, as we find it in Southern Rhodesia, is characterized as a country partly settled by European landowner-producers who have a share in the government but remain a minority of the population and remain dependent, at least for labor, on the indigenous population.1 Reorganising land ownership as a basic element in the implementation of state policy, over a period of several decades land was alienated in Southern Rhodesia for the use of white European settlers who then established a dual economy and a so called two pyramid system of society. According to Mosley, the decision to settle a white agricultural population on the land of Southern Rhodesia had set up three separate conflicts concerning how the land market should be managed: 1) between African and European producers over the ultimate ownership of the land, 2) between government seller and incoming buyer over the price of land and 3) between one type of European producer and another over the use of land.2 In this essay, I will have a look at the development of Southern Rhodesia that led to the installation of a settler economy and the different factors that played a role in it, always with special reference to the land rights.