Isaria N. Kimambo 
Custodians of the Land [PDF ebook] 
Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania

This volume explores the relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania.


In his conclusion, Isaria Kimambo reflects on the efforts of successive historians to strike a balance between external causes of change and local initiative in their interpretations of Tanzanian history. He argues that nationalist and Marxist historians of Tanzanian history, understandably preoccupied through the first quarter-century of the country’s post-colonial history with the impact of imperialism and capitalism on East Africa, tended to overlook the initiatives taken by rural societies to transform themselves. Yet, he suggests, there is good reason for historians to think about the causes of change and innovation in the rural communities of Tanzania, because farming and pastoral people have constantly changed as they adjusted to shifting environmental conditions.


North America: Ohio U Press; Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota

Om författaren

Gregory H. Maddox is a professor of history at Texas Southern University and author of Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History and co-editor of In Search of a Nation: Histories of Authority and Dissidence in Tanzania and Custodians of the Land: Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania.