Ecology and history: the example of Eastern Zambia

The dual impact of expanding capitalism and colonial administration upon eastern Zambian society after 1895 resulted in a major ecological catastrophe in the area during the first half of this century. By the end of the colonial era, the people dwelling in some of the most fertile and hospitable land in the country were impoverished and disease-ridden. The land had been rendered barren and desolate, and the finely balanced relationship between man and his environment that had existed in the area prior to the mid-nineteenth century was undermined, involving it in a process of underdevelopment still unreversed today. Although certain scholars have described the ecological degradation of eastern Zambia, for the most part in terms of land policy,2 they have failed to appreciate the complexity of interactions involved in the unfolding of this process. This article's aim is to explore this complexity.