Beyond Agency: The African Peasantry, the State, and Tobacco in Southern Rhodesia (Colonial Zimbabwe), 1900–80

Abstract This paper examines African peasant tobacco production in Southern Rhodesia from 1900 to 1980, the cusp of colonialism its end. It analyses shifting state policy towards producers, concomitant impact on economies, accumulation patterns and rural physical landscape responses. focuses changing agricultural commodity value chains, cash crop asymmetries, global market forces explain colonial responses agency. We argue that symbolic each commodity, entrenching hierarchy power relations institutionalisation white control, mediated concomitantly ‘peasant agency’. use this case study highlight structural constraints ‘agency’ explore how asymmetries helped structure agrarian encounters Africa. The uses archival sources National Archives Zimbabwe, newspapers, journals Tobacco Research Board (TRB).