Cooperation and Cooptation: The Struggle for Market Control in the Bukoba District of Colonial Tanganyika

Abstract

As the ground shifts beneath the economic and political status quo in Tanzania, and as the issue of market liberalization rises higher on the agenda of policy makers, the history of agricultural marketing in the colonial period takes on a new relevance. More than economics is involved. Market control in peasant economies, argues Stephen Bunker, usually offers the major means to wealth and power.l Any change in the agricultural marketing system will have immediate political ramifications in the countryside.