Regional Political Ecology and Intensive Cultivation in Pre-Colonial and Colonial South Pare, Tanzania

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Economic dependency through the capitalist world system created an extension in space of economic relationships that often led to a decline in local asset development in Africa and elsewhere. Over the last two decades scholars working within the political ecology approach have traced how economic differentiation and marginalization have lead to unsustainable land use in rural, third world societies. However, comparatively little is known about cases where communities have built productive and sustainable intensive agriculture despite capitalist incorporation. I propose that one reason for this gap is that political ecology analysis, though incisive, often tend to focus on macro scales thereby overlooking role of regional factors. In this paper I attempt to answer the question of why irrigated agriculture developed on the eastern side of the South Pare Mountains during the colonial period. My aim is not to present a chronological and detailed history of these systems but rather to propose some possible causal interrelationships between the colonial political economy and regional political ecology.