Plunder for Profit: A Socio-environmental History of Tobacco Farming in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe

In Plunder for Profit: A Socio-environmental History of Tobacco Farming in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, Elijah Doro examines the effects of tobacco farming on rural physical and social landscapes. He draws on the experiences of tobacco stakeholders across the colonial-postcolonial divide to frame "farming landscapes as socio-environmental sites of struggle on which human and nature interact to produce not only new ecosystems and environment change but also new relations of society" (13). More broadly, the book speaks to the burgeoning scholarship on commodities and their place in global and local socioeconomic and environmental entanglements over time and space. Thus, by wading into the hitherto largely understudied environmental dimension of tobacco farming in Zimbabwe, Doro sheds light on the intersection of global and local commodity historical experiences and discourses.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the book consists of six substantive chapters organized thematically and chronologically. The first chapter traces the global and local contexts within which white settler tobacco commercial farming was introduced in Southern Rhodesia. However, with so much having been written on pioneering white settler tobacco farmers, little can be gained from rehashing this story. The second chapter casts new light onto conservationism on Southern Rhodesian tobacco farms, complementing my own recently published work, Politics, Profits, and Protection: Zimbabwe's Tobacco Industry since 1947 (2022), which, despite its focus on postwar global tobacco trade dynamics and their local implications during the same period, omits this important dimension.Postwar tobacco farmer experiences covered in this chapter shine new light on the old debate about the politics and pace of conservationism within colonial Zimbabwe's white settler community. Unlike previously, when planters "mined" the soil, the dynamic of capital, exorbitant land prices, and generally high farm production costs, Doro argues, forced farmers to shift from extensive to intensive farming as well as to adopt mechanical and biological soil conservation initiatives, beyond the exhortations of state policy. However, it must be pointed out that without a pronounced "economic" element, tobacco's environment cannot be properly understood. Markets and prices shaped production decisions and practices to a very significant degree, and, for that reason, Doro's environmental history should be read together with works on the politics and economics of tobacco farming.Chapter 3, which covers the period 1945–80, extends the environmental theme by charting the political economy of pesticide use in Southern Rhodesian tobacco farms against the backdrop of contemporary global faith in the scientific control of nature. The chapter uses African workers' experiences with pesticides on tobacco farms to critique contemporary global discourses on environmentalism that failed to take into account that in settler colonies like Southern Rhodesia, environmentalism "operated unevenly along lines of race and class . . . impacting black Africans and whites in distinctly different ways" (151). In doing so, the chapter captures another dimension of the social violence, plunder, and exploitation to which Black workers on tobacco farms were subjected.In chapter 4, Doro takes us back to 1900 to introduce African tobacco farmers' experiences in Southern Rhodesia up to 1980. Part of the aim is to "discuss cash crop and commodity asymmetries within the colonial economy as structural constraints on peasant agency" (167). However, with respect to tobacco, this is well established in Zimbabwean historiography. Building on existing literature on African peasant tobacco during early colonial contact to focus more on their postwar experiences, during which period settler policy toward African cash crop production changed, would have been a more rewarding exercise.Taking us back to 1960, chapter 5 revisits the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) period and its buildup by adding the refreshingly unexplored environmental dimension, thereby transcending existing socioeconomic and political historiographies on UDI and its implications. The chapter's coverage of how sanctions-inspired diversification from tobacco to other crops increased pressure on tobacco landscapes is insightful and sets it apart from the existing literature. This helps in the reconstruction of a fuller history of the multidimensional impact of Rhodesia's UDI.Chapter 6, which straddles the colonial and postcolonial eras to trace the intersection of tobacco control and public health discourses, examines how tobacco capital influenced national tobacco policy from 1953 to 2020. However, the section on independent Zimbabwe reads more like a survey or an epilogue than a stand-alone chapter. Seeking to cover such complex issues over such a long time span was certain to pose evidentiary and structural challenges.While the period and the diversity of themes covered are clearly ambitious, the adoption of a blended thematic and chronological approach resulted in repetition that disrupts the flow of the book. Not least problematic is the title of the book, which refers to "Southern Rhodesia" and "Zimbabwe" as if these are two different countries, a claim made by ex-Rhodesians scattered across the globe who have refused to accept the reality of the territory's majority rule since April 18, 1980, under the name Zimbabwe. The author cannot use the need for historical accuracy to justify the use of "Southern Rhodesia" and "Zimbabwe" in the book title because the country changed from "Southern Rhodesia" to "Rhodesia" to "Zimbabwe-Rhodesia" and, finally, to "Zimbabwe" during the period he covers. The author's characterization of the 1966–79 war as a "bush war" despite acknowledging that calling it a "bush" war or "liberation" war was political, is problematic (178). Other minor factual errors include calling both Frank Clements and Edward Harben tobacco farmers, when Harben was the farmer and Clements a journalist.That aside, Doro commendably weaves an insightful story that reinserts an understudied environmental dimension into Zimbabwe's tobacco historiography. In doing so, he lays a firm foundation for detailed future conversations on public health, tobacco control, and public policy in tobacco-dependent countries in the context of the global anti-tobacco lobby and climate change discourses. Such conversations may lead to the search for answers to Doro's impassioned plea—captured in the book's angry and agitated conclusion—to stop environmental and social plunder on tobacco landscapes. Undoubtedly, commodity and environmental historians, climate activists, governments and global and local public health practitioners will, in different ways, find this book useful for their respective causes.