Introduction: Historical and Regional Perspectives on Landscape Transformations in Northeastern Tanzania, 1850-2000

• Published in: The International journal of African historical studies Vol. 41; no. 3; pp. 369 - 382
• Main Authors: Håkansson, N. Thomas, Widgren, Mats, Börjeson, Lowe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Boston University African Studies Center 01.01.2008; Boston University
• Subjects: African history; Agricultural land; Business and economics; Changes; Ekonomi; Environmental economics; Ethnology; Etnologi; Grasslands; Historisk-filosofiska ämnen; history; History and philosophy subjects; Human ecology; Human geography; Human geography, economic geography; Humanekologi; HUMANIORA och RELIGIONSVETENSKAP; HUMANITIES and RELIGION; Kulturgeografi; Kulturgeografi, ekonomisk geografi; Land cover; Land economics; Land use; Landscapes; Political ecology; Political economy; Politics; SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP; Social and Economic Geography; Social och ekonomisk geografi; SOCIAL SCIENCES; Soil conservation; Sustainable agriculture; Tanzania; Europe; Africa; Tanzania
• ISSN: 0361-7882; 2326-3016; 2326-3016

[...] contemporary land use has a long history of regional and global interconnections that cannot be reduced to a dichotomy between a precolonial subsistence economy and its subsequent incorporation into an exploitative capitalist political economy.16 The study of historical processes involves not only evidence about how, where, and why processes of change take place, but also an understanding of how the present is intimately integrated with our conceptualizations of the past.\n The appropriation of land for wildlife conservation, commercial hunting and mining are forms of specialized land use that are aimed at national and global markets and thus largely disconnected from the regional economy, even if their presence in the landscape as alienated blocks of land evidently has far reaching impacts on the regional political economy.45 While the large commercial farms are relatively new developments with questionable effects on long-term productivity, other areas are expanding older indigenous irrigation systems and mixed fields. [...] it is clear that the changing patterns of land use in northeastern Tanzania cannot be interpreted directly from such theoretical concepts as luxury versus bulk goods, market exchange, or unequal exchange.