Rethinking the reserves: Southern Rhodesia's Land Husbandry Act reviewed

As new archival evidence becomes available, so the history of the 1950s is likely to be the subject of major revision. By reviewing existing studies of one of this period's key features, notably the Land Husbandry Act, this article suggests a number of ways in which the subject might be opened up by future research. It argues that the actual impact of the Land Husbandry Act may have been overestimated, at the same time as the extent of differentiation among the peasantry was underestimated. Rural elites may well have survived the Act, in the process crucially shaping opposition to it.