Themes in the Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890-1979

This book captures Zimbabwe's economic and social history with a focus on the various colonial categories as they interacted and unfolded. It analyses the complex histories of colonialism by illustrating the points of intersection in and interaction of the various aspects of colonialism. Chapters within the book demonstrate how various aspects of colonial society — environmental, ideological, and economic — related to each other. This book departs from earlier similar publications in how various themes or elements in society were interwoven. Existing titles in this area tend to isolate a single theme, such as environmental or women’s history, from other categories. In reality, colonial spaces, however, did not exist in isolation. The social, economic, political, ideological and environmental factors, for instance, were intricately interconnected. The book includes topics such as health infrastructure and urbanization in Southern Rhodesia, encounters between plastic manufacturing industries and the Customs Union, the development and maintenance of Rhodesia’s road infrastructure, livestock diseases, the conversion of indigenous lands into wildlife sanctuaries, and the brutalization of workers.