Similar but different? Assessing the reserve economy legacy of Namibia

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This paper argues that as policy‐thinking on rural development in Namibia has emerged, there has been a tendency to draw on a particular, somewhat distorted, history of the countryside. More accurate analyses of different localities are being generated by Namibianist historians, but such research ought to be located not only within a country framework, but also within a comparative history of Namibia and her southern African neighbours. In initiating this latter task, the paper uses the issues raised in Beinart's paper ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development’, Journal of Southern African Studies (1984) to begin comparing Rhodesia, South Africa and Namibia. It suggests a number of questions for historical research relating to the nature and strategy of the Namibian colonial state and highlights some aspects of the experience of rural people in Namibia which contrast sharply with Rhodesia and South Africa.