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This essay examines the career of Eric Dutton in five British African colonies from 1919 to 1952, with case studies of his work in Lusaka and Zanzibar. In analyzing Dutton's career, I use a Gramscian conception of the role of intellectuals in creating colonial hegemony, against the backdrop of recent research on the relationship of geography to colonial discourse. Dutton worked and corresponded with key players in Britain's African empire. He was a major force behind early urban-planning programs in East and Central Africa and author of four geographical books. Permanently disabled by war wounds, he was also permanently infatuated with the moral rightness of British imperial culture. A concern for geography's professional relationship with, and the geographical legacy of, colonialism has emerged in recent scholarship on Africa, largely through studies of travel writing, fiction, and nineteenth- or early twentieth-century exploration geography. Later scholar-officials like Dutton sought to apply their knowledge to the shaping of spaces to serve the Empire's direct and immediate needs in Africa, even while trying to win the hearts and minds of its subject peoples. Around Timothy Mitchell's (1988) concept of "enframing," I build an analysis of the spatial projects with which Dutton is most associated and show how Lusaka and Zanzibar were enframed by his plans. Through his publications and correspondences, as well as his seemingly omnipresent service, Dutton has an important legacy that has neither been articulated nor analyzed, one which points to the importance of contextualized biography for analyses of colonial discourse. I argue here for seeing Dutton as an intellectual in the service of colonial hegemony and its enframing spatial discourse, although the character of his agency exemplifies why that attempted hegemony failed.
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This article examines a three-week long strike in Zanzibar City in August and September 1948. The strike began among labourers from the mainland at work in Zanzibar port, but spread to all African work-people in the City after an unsuccessful attempt to break the strike by the government. This attempt had led to a major demonstration and confrontation at the entrance to the port, violence being only narrowly averted.While at one level the strike was a Zanzibar sequel to the strikes of the previous year in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, in Zanzibar there was additional significance in the fact that the City and Island's work-force were in very large proportion men from the East African mainland. Zanzibar's dependence on mainland labour had begun in the early decades of the twentieth century. In those years mainland labour had been particularly well-paid, by the standards of the time. By the late 1940s however, mainland labour in Zanzibar was as poor as, perhaps poorer than, its mainland counterparts. Besides, the political structure of the Protectorate aggravated sentiments of alienation since mainlanders were not regarded as permanent residents for whom the government should have any particular concern: nor were mainlanders represented in the legislature.Even after the strike was over the colonial authorities saw only a need for labour reforms rather than political re-structuring to accommodate mainlanders. The strike however had briefly united all Africans, indigenous and mainlander. When, a decade later, this unity of Africans, mainlander and indigenous, town and plantation labourer and peasant, was re-formed, revolution followed. As a portent, therefore, Zanzibar's strike is of particular significance.
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- Journal Article (2)
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Between 1900 and 1999
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Between 1970 and 1979
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Between 1970 and 1979
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