ITINERARIO vol. Ill (1979) 2.

89

AFRICAN RESISTANCE TO THE IMPOSITION OF COLONIALISM:

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

As in all aspects of life, the practice of history has its fashions.

For reasons, in the language of the history of science, both internal and
external to the logical development of the intellectual discipline, certain
topics attract the interest of scholars and a vigorous debate ensues.
After a while, the ardour cools. Other subjects come to the forefront of
academic discussion, until, years or decades later, it may be that the
unresolved points of the initial discussion are once again investigated,
the arguments are taken up again and what had seemed to be a dead,
almost irrelevant problem comes to life again.
Even in the short period - scarcely more than twenty years - in
which African history has been a recognizably academic field of inqui-
ry, such cycles can be seen, if not perhaps in such an extreme form. In
this short survey, I intend to analyse one such process, namely the in-
vestigation of the forms of primary resistance by Africans to the impo-
sition of colonial rule in the classic period of European imperialism, say
from 1880 to 1914. I will be dealing almost exclusively with the areas
of East and Central Africa - Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi,
Zimbabwe - where a more or less coherent debate can be seen. A similar
set of problems also arose in the study of West Africa but, apart from
the book edited by Crowder (1971), does not seem to have come into
such sharp focus. Although there has been much more important work
done on resistance to colonial rule south of the Limpopo, there are
still remarkable lacunae in that literature. The most obvious of these
is the absence of an even half-way adequate account of the Hundred
Years' War between the Xhosa and the Whites on the Eastern frontier
of the Cape Colony, with the partial exceptions of recent work by
Saunders (1976A, 1976B) and Peires (1979).

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 90

As so much else in the historiography of this era of African his-

tory, historians were able to define their positions, and clarify their
views, by taking exception to the work of Ronald Robinson and John
Gallagher. In this case, it was not one of their major theses that was
challenged, but rather what amounted to little more than a few throw-
away remarks in a chapter devoted to a rather different subject. In it
they claimed that whether or not a society resisted the coming of the
Europeans was a function of its social structure. Resistance, we are
told, was the 'romantic, reactionary struggle against the facts, the
passionate protest of societies which were shocked by a new age of
change and would not be comforted.... The more [a. society's] unity
hung together on the luxuries of slave-raiding, plunder and migration,
the less its aristocracy had to lose by struggle against the Europeans.'
As against this, 'the more urbanized, commercial and bureaucratic
the polity, the more its rulers would be tempted to come to terms',
leading to the 'defter nationalisms' which 'planned to reform their
personalities and regain their powers by operating in the idiom of
Westernisers' (Robinson and Gallagher, 1962, 618, 640).
Within these grandiloquent phrases, there is an exceedingly
attractive hypothesis, the more so as it is phrased in terms of proba-
bilities rather than as an absolute law. The only trouble with it is that
it happens not to be true. In one of the most important articles on the
subject of African resistance to European colonialism, T.O.Ranger
pointed out that 'resisting societies were /hot/ necessarily different in
structure, motive or atmosphere from cooperating ones'. Indeed, so
he claimed 'A historian has... a difficult task in deciding whether a
specific society should be described as 'resistant' or collaborative' over
any given period of time. Many societies began in one camp and ended
in the other. Virtually all African states made some attempt to find a
basis on which to collaborate with the Europeans; virtually all of them
had some interests or values which they were prepared to defend, if
necessary by hopeless resistance or revolt' (Ranger, 1969,304). Ranger
was prepared to make one generalisation about these societies that were
able either to collaborate or to resist. They had to be of a sufficient
scale and political organisation for decisions to be made. Not even this
generalisation lasted long, however. The bloody guerilla war fought over
nearly two centuries in South Africa by the 'Bushmen', Khoisan with
highly attenuated political structure, was quickly brought forward as a
counterexample (Marks, 1972).
There were, so it seemed, no great generalisations that could be
made as to why some African societies resisted and others accommo-
dated to the coming of the colonialists. In each individual case, the

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 ITINERARIO vol. 111(1979)2.

pressure exerted by the intruding Europeans, the balance of internal

African politics and emnities, the chance of who made the first alliances
with the whites, even the prejudices of the colonialists, all played a roll
in determining the actions of the Africans. In each individual or regional
example, there is much that is instructive for the history of the conti-
nent. In terms of broad theory, however, there was, so it seemed to
Ranger and to many of his fellows, more interest in the question how the
resistance was organised. Looking particularly at the Maji Maji revolt in
southern Tanzania and the risings of 1896-7 in Zimbabwe (Ranger,
1967) it was noted that they entailed the mobilisation of large masses of
people from numerous political units. In the case of Maji Maji, they
spoke a number of different languages, while in Zimbabwe numerous
traditionally hostile groups had fought together against the whites. This
was possible, so it was argued, because of the ability of the religious
leaders of the area to act as coordinators, indeed as motivators, of the
resistance. Moreover, it was not only in these great revolts that religious
leaders were of importance. Ranger claimed t h a t ' a list of risings alleged-
ly led by 'witch-doctors' in East and Central Africa amounts to some
thirty-five to forty instances' (1969, 315). This was the way in which the
masses were mobilised to fight colonialism.
It is here that the impetus for studying the early period of resist-
ance against the colonialists can be seen. In those heady years following
independence in East Africa, historians, whether they worked in Africa
or abroad, whether they were themselves Africans or not, were caught up
in the fervour of building the new nations and so came to study what
might be taken as the first mass movements within the countries of the
new Africa. Ranger indeed, on the basis of somewhat scanty evidence,
came to argue for the continuity between the movements of primary re-
sistance and the growth of modern mass nationalism (1968). In doing so
he was concerned to stress the popular nature of nationalism more than
to make any definite statements about the resistance of the early coloni-
al period. Nationalism was not only a question of the elites in the towns
and bargaining in legislative councils. Rather it was a matter of mobili-
sation, of mass enthusiasm, as had been the wars against imperialist pene-
tration. TANU spread through the countryside with the all-embracing
speed of the Hongo possession during Maji Maji. No wonder Maji Maji
was 'the national epic of Tanzania' (Gwassa and Iliffe, 1968, 1).
No wonder, also, that after a few years scholars' interests chang-
ed. As the optimism of the years after independence gave way to realities
of the 1970s, it was seen that mobilisation was not enough. Getting
people to work together against the enemies - poverty, illiteracy and so
forth - could not compensate for the legacy of colonialism, for the mis-

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 ITINERARIO vol. Ill (1979) 2.

formed economic structures, for the growing differentials between clas-

ses, for the rampant underdevelopment. For all the failure of the move-
ments, the works on Zimbabwe, on Maji Maji, had been hopeful. The
world could be changed by such actions. Now this was seen not to be
possible, or at least likely. The intellectual energy of the 1970s went into
such subjects as the agricultural history of colonial Africa ( e.g. Palmer
and Parsons, eds. 1977). The economic had taken over from the political
as the main motif of its historiography. It is thus not surprising that in
1976, John Lonsdale noted that 'so far as resistance and rebellion is con-
cerned, I'm not sure that discussion has proceeded very far since the con-
tributions of some years back...' (cited in Ranger, 1977, 133).
Is is somewhat ironic that his statement should be made by Lons-
dale for in the next year, 1977, he published an article 'The Politics of
Conquest: The British in Western Kenya, 1894-1908', (1977), which
is a most significant contribution to the discussion which he considers
not the have progressed far in the previous years. He deals with an area
in which the political relations were exceedingly complex, as the African
polities were of small scale and the British had to establish their authori-
ty piecemeal. Lonsdale argues that 'explanatory variables ... most com-
monly deployed in analysis' of resistance and accommodation - 'the
degree of cohesion in a ruling class or social structure, their political for-
tunes, whether on the upswung or downturn, the availability of a religi-
ous tradition for which and by which to fight, the nature of the local
economy, especially its responsiveness to market expansion or technical
innovation, military capacity, the nature and intensity of European de-
mands' - are of little predictive value in explaining African reactions in
Nyanza. Rather Lonsdale would seem to be making two main points.
First, nowhere in Eastern Africa - nor indeed elsewhere in the continent -
is there such a being as 'primary resistance'. In all cases there had been
greater or lesser contact with the coast. The world capitalist economy
had begun to malform African society well before the formal establish-
ment of colonial control. The colonialists came in along the roads used
by the traders and entered into the net of relations already established
by them, a fact of great importance for the detailed process of conquest.
Secondly, Lonsdale stresses the fact that he is dealing with a process, not
with an event. Indeed, he distinguishes four main stages - and one inter-
mezzo when, due to a mutiny among their Sudanese mercenaries the
British presence in eastern Kenya virtually vanished. These stages were,
first, a period of coexistence, when the British had to work in close
partnership with their African allies, followed by one of ascendancy
when 'the British came to gain a hold over, but not to monopolise, ex-
ternal relations within Nyanza, to use this superiority to choose and sup-

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 ITINERARIO vol. Ill (1979) 2. 93

port their African allies at the parochial levels, but to make very few
demands in return'. After the intermezzo, the British were able to en-
force domination, as they were for the first time pressing their demands,
especially for labour in the localities. The strain on many of their erst-
while collaborators became too great and armed clashes became more
common, while the British, forced to multiply the number of their col-
laborators in order to implement their wishes, had to make a large num-
ber of detailed local settlements. Thereafter, in the final phase of control
came 'the multiplication of African roles under direct British command',
with the consequence that whereas earlier 'African leaders had raided
others as allies of the British, now they coerced their own people, as
British subordinates'. In this shift from the oppositions of collaboration
and resistance lies, surely, the essence of colonialism.
Further south, there has been much important work done on the
Zimbabwe risings of 1896-7. In a sense this was predictable. Ranger's
work in the 1960s had stemmed from his study of this rebellion and his
Revolt in Southern Rhodesia was the most influential book on the sub-
ject of African resistance. Thus, more than any other work it has been
subjected to close scrutiny. Articles by Cobbing (1977) and Beach
(1979) - and indeed a mea culpa from Ranger himself (1978, though c f.
Ranger 1977). - have demonstrated that what was once seen as the
cement holding the risings together, maybe even the motivator of the
risings, namely the religious Mwari cult had in no sense the political role
that Ranger ascribed to it. The Mwari mediums did not pas the messages
around. The risings can no longer be seen as analogous to the mass enthu-
siasm, which , so it was fondly hoped and felt, drove on African national-
ism.
But it was not merely the size of the target - or the striking posi-
tion of therisingsin the history of Zimbabwe - that brought this concen-
tration of work. Rather, it would seem that in Zimbabwe the risings have
remained relevant to the concerns of the country in a way that has not
been the case further north. In a country where a guerilla war has been
fought over the course of the last decade, historians naturally tend to
reassess continually that guerilla war of scarcely more than two genera-
tions ago. The same applies with equal if not more force to Mozambique.
The most important work in this respect has been done by Allen and
Barbara Isaacman, lately in collaboration with a Research Brigade of the
Universidade de Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo. This shows that what had
begun as active sympathy for the Frelimo freedom has been translated
into active collaboration once they gained power. Both the commitment
and the changing nature of the Isaacmans' relationship with Mozam-
bique can be sensed in their works. They were, of course, always 'enga-

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 94 ITINERARIO vol. Ill (1979) 2.

geY In the preface to The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique

Allen Isaacman writes:
From the outset we visualized this study as having a political as
well as a scholarly purpose. When we began researching this book
in 1967 the Portuguese seemed firmly entrenched in Mozam-
bique where they continued to crank out the myth of lusotropic-
alism. We felt it was important to challenge the Euro-centric and
culturally arrogant distortions and, in some small way, to try and
liberate the Mozambican past. This concern is not in contradic-
tion with our commitment to the highest levels of scholarship.
On the contrary, they are one and the same!' (xxiv).
Nevertheless, it is perhaps significant that this book, published in 1976,
was dedicated to 'The Freedom fighters of Mozambique and Zimbabwe',
while Mozambique (1972), Isaacman's first book, an analysis of the
prazo system of the Zambesi valley, published some four years earlier,
was offered 'to the People of Mozambique'. But even The Tradition of
Resistance has not been spared self-criticism. In it Allen Isaacman ana-
lyses the various defensive wars, revolts, rebellions and risings by which
the people of the Zambesi valley attempted to retain or regain their free-
dom in the face of aggressive Portuguese colonialism. In the course of
this book he makes numerous theoretical advances, most notably in the
application of the concept of 'day-to-day resistance' - a term borrowed
from American slave studies - to such phenomena as non-payment of
taxes, avoidance of labour duties and so forth. This allows him to stress
the dialectical relationship between the nature of the colonial rule and
the forms and strength of the resistance to it. Nevertheless, the core of
their work relates to the various wars fought notably by the Barue and
related Shona people, but also by the Sena, the Tonga and the Massingire
against the Portuguese. In his analyses much of Isaacman's attention is
focussed on the problem of leadership. The importance of the Muena-
mutapa is also stressed when he deals with the various Shona revolts. In
both the Barue struggles for independence, which ended in the war of
1902 and in the Barue revolt of 1917 the role of the monarchy and of
the spirit mediums is stressed. The major problem he deals with relates to
the ability of the leadership to mobilise the masses, the elitist perspec-
tive that this entailed notwithstanding.
Apparently in realisation of the shortcomings of such an ap-
proach, in the light of the experience of the FRELIMO freedom fighters,
a year later the Isaacmans published an article in which they argued that:
Given the existence of social differentiation and inter-ethnic
rivalries, the indiscriminate use of the term African resistance
throughout the literature tends to obscure more than it illumi-

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 ITINERARIO vol. 111(1979)2. 95

nates. In order to sharpen our analysis, we must study seriously

the economic and social configuration of Central and southern
African societies on the eve of the scramble. For the colonial
period we must focus on the atomized resistance of peasants and
workers as well as on the protests of the urban poor (1977A).
Thus they stress the divided nature of pre-colonial society, in which
conflict was not only between factions of the elite, but also between
those strata that were in the process of becoming classes. Earlier they
dealt with the relationships between leadership and followers in terms
reminiscent of Lenin's views of the nature of a revolutionary elite party.
Now they are more concerned to stress the possibility of the initiative
for resistance coming from below, sometimes railroading their erstwhile
rulers along with them, sometimes having to struggle against them as well
as the colonialists. For this reason, such phenomena as 'social banditry'
have attracted their attention (1977B).
As a corollary to this, they stress that what they are dealing with
is not so much resistance to colonialism as to capitalism. There is a con-
tinuity between armed resistance and such matters as tax evasion, deser-
tion, contract breaking and so forth. Indeed, if one accepts the dictum of
Wallerstein that 'the expansion of Europe was really.... the expansion of
the capitalist mode of production' (1976,31), then the whole history of
resistance, from the killing of d'Almeida in 1505 to the Soweto riots - to
take only South African examples - are part of a single process, albeit
one in which the conjuncture has been as marked as that of the capitalist
world-economy itself. The continuity may not be as direct as Ranger
thought, but it is there, and is seen to be there by the actors in the
historical drama. In his famous speech at the Rivonia trial, Nelson Man-
dela described how 'In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders
of my tribe [ the ThembuJ telling stories of the old days. Among the
tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in
defence of the fatherland....' (cited in Saunders, 1976A). These memor-
ies were one of the main streams into his own decision to work as a revo-
lutionary to build a new South Africa.

Robert Ross

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 ITINERARIO vol. Ill (1979) 2.

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N.B. It should be noted that this is not a complete bibliography, by any means, but
merely a list of works cited.
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