Paper short abstract:

In a 1956 meeting, Senegalese local politicians confronted French colonial officials over the technocratic design of a massive rice cultivation project. They articulated a vision of a future characterized by flourishing agrarian production, in opposition to colonial capitalist agriculture.

Paper long abstract:

Following the upheaval of World War II, France embarked on an ambitious program of developmental imperialism, investing substantial public funds in its colonies’ infrastructure and agriculture. Massive state-led projects meant to “rationalize” production and stabilize imperial trade networks frequently came into conflict with longstanding local economic systems. This conflict is vividly illustrated by the transcript of a 1956 meeting where French and Senegalese officials discussed the rice-farming project known as the Mission d’Aménagement du fleuve Sénégal (MAS). In the meeting, the governor of Senegal and administrators who oversaw the MAS were confronted by councilors in Senegal’s Territorial Assembly, almost all of whom were Senegalese and many of whom hailed from the rural valley of the Senegal River. The councilors criticized the French administration’s inattention to the needs of rural populations, arguing that current MAS plans did not address the threats posed to agrarian communities by urbanization, state land management, and the expansion of colonial capitalism. Read alongside other Senegalese responses to French economic and agricultural policy, the heated discussion in the 1956 meeting illuminates tensions between industrialization and agrarianism, urbanization and ruralism, economic integration and economic autarky. I argue that the Senegalese councilors articulated a vision of a future characterized by flourishing agrarian production in opposition to colonial capitalist agriculture.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on German model farms in newly independent Tunisia, we analyze the informal imperialism of postwar development aid in a postcolonial setting, showing the ambitious agenda of German and Tunisian actors to transform the economic basis of (rural) Tunisian society as well as its social fabric.

Paper long abstract:

The end of formal imperialism in Mediterranean countries after World War Two was not the end of Western-European influences in the region. Especially West Germany’s foreign policy aimed to transform the Mediterranean basin into its economic backyard. This went hand in hand with new forms of political and economic advisory and expertise, in which agricultural experts played a prominent role. Reaching independence from French colonial rule in 1956, Tunisia seemed to be an “open space” for Western developmentalists and quickly became one of the most important receiving countries of West German developmental aid. This led (among other things) to the establishment of an “Animal breeding teaching and demonstration farm” in Bejaoua in 1957, and a few years later of a second model farm focused on animal husbandry in Sedjenane. Those German model farms are a perfect example of how breeding cattle can be understood as a way of maintaining imperial power structures after the end of colonialism. As a site of development action, they also allow to think about the complex interactions of human and non-human agency. They bring together the ambitious agenda of German and Tunisian actors to transform not only the economic basis of the local society, but also the social fabric of rural Tunisia: intensifying animal husbandry aimed at transforming a semi-nomadic society into a settled farmers society, while engineering local environments accordingly. However, they also open insights in the way, animals “resisted” this new logic of “breed engineering”.

Paper short abstract:

The paper studies agrarian technocrats using marginal lands in Taiwan to settle retired servicemen retreating from mainland China. Although some projects did succeed in generating profits, many were criticized for environmental consequences as the island democratized by the end of the Cold War.

Paper long abstract:

This paper studies the vision of marginal land development in Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), an agency created by the Republic of China (ROC) government with American aid in 1948. Following its defeat in the Chinese Civil War, the ROC relocated to Taiwan—an island inhabited by the Indigenous Austronesian peoples, settled by ethnic Chinese in the seventeenth century, ceded to Japanese in 1895, and took over by the ROC in 1945. To enhance the government’s legitimacy among the older generation of settlers, the JCRR redistributed lands from landed elites to tenant farmers. For the hundreds of thousands of soldiers arriving from the mainland, the majority stayed in the densely-populated western plains, but several thousands were recruited in the 1950s and 60s to develop what the state considered “marginal lands”: slopes and valleys in Indigenous territories and reclaimed tidal lands and riverbanks. This paper investigates how retired servicemen were envisioned by the ROC as anticommunist warriors fighting for the lost mainland, and by the JCRR as agents of development boosting Taiwan’s economy. However, although some highland orchards did become an economic success by the 1970s, many reclaimed lands failed to become agriculturally productive due to unfavorable environmental conditions. As the government democratized in the 1980s, both projects became focus of environmental struggle to reduce soil erosion in mountains and wetland destruction along the coast, and retired servicemen began to demand state compensation, thus demonstrating the ambivalent results of state-directed colonization during the Cold War.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how Kickapoos seeking refuge from the U.S. settler state became part of Mexico’s settler colonial project, revealing the long legacies of agrarian colonization projects and complicating the politics of citizenship and indigeneity at the heart of Mexican revolutionary rhetoric.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes how Native peoples seeking refuge from the U.S. settler state became part of Mexico’s own settler colonial project in its northern borderlands, arriving in the wake of decades of war against Yaquis and Apaches, among other Indigenous peoples of northern Mexico. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, traditionalist tribal leaders from Kickapoo, Cherokee, and Osage communities sought concessions from Porfirio Díaz’s administration to establish tribal colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. This occurred in the context of the settler land rush and movement for statehood in Oklahoma. Ultimately, only the Kickapoos established a small colony in Sonora, but the story of all three tribes’ negotiations with the Mexican government and explorations of potential colony sites provides a unique window into transnational Indigenous history and land and resource sovereignty.

Tracing two distinct waves of Mexican agrarian colonization history, in Mexico’s pre- and post-revolutionary periods (1880-1910 and 1910-1950, respectively), I analyze how Kickapoos forged community and identity in northern Mexico and how they understood and enacted their colonization projects in relation to other communities in the region. Comparing the ways Kickapoos engaged with and were impacted by post-revolutionary reform shows how the Mexican government managed multiple stakeholders’ claims to land and natural resources and integrated various notions of property holding into revolutionary land reform. The Kickapoo case reveals the long legacies of agrarian colonization projects in Mexico and complicates the politics of citizenship, identity, and indigeneity at the heart of revolutionary rhetoric and scholarship on post-revolutionary land reform.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this research is to study some specific experiences and patterns of agrarian colonization of internal areas in the South of Italy during the post-unification period.

Paper long abstract:

The colonization of wastelands is an essential factor in the anthropization and economic growth of a territory. In such a perspective, the aim of this research is to study some specific cases of agrarian colonization of internal areas in the South of Italy during the post-unification period to measure the impact and responsiveness of local communities to the legislative initiatives for land redistribution and reorganization of state-owned assets (especially the partition of common lands) promoted by the State. Particular attention was dedicated to the interaction between society and the environment and the relationship between landowners and peasants, essential factors for studying the development of agrarian colonization projects in a specific area. Some specific cases of "model" villages were analyzed, focusing on urban planning projects (types of housing, animal stables, etc.) and the distribution of agricultural land. The focus was centered on the province of Salerno (Campania Region) for a time span from the "state owned assets question" to the post-World War II (agrarian reform). The study was conducted through the documentation kept in the territorial state archives (Naples and Salerno), The Commissariato per gli Usi Civici per la Campania e per il Molise and the Central State Archives in Rome. The archival analysis was enriched with spatial elaborations carried out with GIS technology to geolocate the case studies and to observe the main land transformations in the long run.

Paper short abstract:

From 1950s agrarian colonization spread in Latin America. I analyze the concept of regional planning used by German geographers to study it. Based on a functional space, geographers zoomed out and imagined regions where effective colonization would bring welfare and modernization to countryside.

Paper long abstract:

Beginning in the 1950s, agrarian colonization projects spread throughout Latin America. Many were promoted under agrarian laws designed to promote rural modernization and provide land to peasants. Agrarian colonization accelerated after the 1960s under the Alliance for Progress. Promoting spontaneous and state-led colonization would avoid revolutionary agrarian reform and expand the arable land needed to launch the Green Revolution. Scholars from different disciplines tried to follow the ongoing projects and studied individual cases. Instead, geographers emphasized the need for a regional approach as a research method to study the colonies, but also to improve them. For geographers, region was more than a unit of analysis, it was a unit of projection of rural futures. In this paper, I analyze the concept of regional planning used by German geographers to study and project agrarian colonization in Central and Andean Latin America. Using different theories, such as Thünen's concentric circles and Christaller's central place theory, and a functional conception of space, geographers zoomed out colonies and imagined regions where the state would direct an effective colonization that would guarantee the welfare of colonists, the connection of colonies to local market centers, and the establishment of cash crops that would modernize the countryside.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of private companies in agrarian colonization under Brazil's military regime, analyzing the Japanese-Brazilian PRODECER project. Aimed at transforming the Cerrado into modern farms, PRODECER sparked controversies over the future of Brazil's agriculture and sovereignty.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines debates over agrarian development in the Brazilian Cerrado region from 1979 to 1985, focusing on the influence of private companies in state-led frontier expansion. During this period, private entities assumed an increasingly pivotal role in the colonization of agrarian landscapes, exemplified by the initiation of the Japanese-Brazilian Cooperation Program PRODECER launched in 1979. The primary objectives of PRODECER were to settle approximately 100 families from diverse Brazilian regions on land parcels ranging from 300 to 500 hectares, providing them with credit and technical support. The consequences of this endeavor included the transformation of vast stretches of north-western Minas Gerais into a modern agricultural system, accompanied by the conversion of native Cerrado vegetation. The project involved public and corporate stakeholders from Brazil and Japan. Notably, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) envisioned the Cerrado as a key supplier of food products for the Japanese economy and international markets, sparking intense contestation in Brazil. These debates revolved around differing visions of Brazil's agrarian future, intertwined with questions of national priorities: should the focus be on domestic markets, aimed at sustaining the Brazilian population with staples like beans and manioc, or should it shift towards international markets, emphasizing cash crops like soy? These deliberations coincided with a burgeoning crisis in the Brazilian countryside, characterized by a growing population of landless peasants, and the re-emergence of civil society movements. Consequently, discussions surrounding land distribution, agricultural orientation, and national sovereignty constituted a potent mixture that challenged the legitimacy of the civil-military regime.