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The role of drought in agrarian crisis and social change: the famine of the 1890s in south-eastern Africa

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Abstract

During the second half of the 1890s, south-eastern Africa was hit by a drought-driven ecological crisis. Using records previously unexploited for climate and climate impact research, and which cover the area from modern-day Zimbabwe and Botswana to eastern South Africa, this study explores the complexity of this crisis through an analysis of the spatial extent, duration and severity of the regional drought and its associated socio-economic and environmental repercussions. This interdisciplinary study stands at the nexus of environmental, economic and social history. The records used include (a) British administrative sources, (b) reports and letters by members of various Protestant missionary societies from diverse environments across the study area, together with (c) local newspapers. Analysis of these materials reveals that generally the period was marked by a sequence of considerably delayed rainy seasons, which in turn negatively impacted upon the rain-fed agriculture. Below-average levels of summer rainfall also adversely affected the development of young crops. The drought was more severe and continuous in the interior of the region than towards the Indian Ocean coast. The prolonged dry conditions were accompanied by, and likely exacerbated, locust outbreaks and the spread of cattle plague (Rinderpest). We demonstrate in this paper that drought, as the original driver of the crisis, triggered a cascade of responses from harvest failure to famine and ultimately led to profound socio-economic change.

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Notes

  1. All original source references are given in endnotes in S5.

  2. This paper focuses on the land south of the Zambezi River, on Matabeleland and to a lesser degree Mashonaland. However, the land north of the Zambezi also formed part of what was from 1895 onwards referred to as “Rhodesia”. These territories were part of the British Empire, but the administration lay in the hands of the British South Africa Company. Matabeleland and Mashonaland formed “Southern Rhodesia” in 1898, which in the twentieth century became a British colony. In this paper, we refer to the area as Rhodesia, as this was the official name during most of the study period.

  3. These numbers apply to Natal within the borders of 1896. In 1903, the districts Utrecht, Vryheid and Paulpietersburg were transferred to the Colony of Natal; cattle in these districts is excluded for the comparison.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant number F/00 504/D. We extend our thanks to the ELM archive that holds the records of the Hermannsburg mission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, Brighton, BN2 4GJ, UK

    Kathleen Pribyl & David J. Nash

  2. Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Kathleen Pribyl

  3. School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa

    David J. Nash

  4. Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Jørgen Klein

  5. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

    Georgina H. Endfield

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  1. Kathleen Pribyl
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Correspondence to Kathleen Pribyl.

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Pribyl, K., Nash, D.J., Klein, J. et al. The role of drought in agrarian crisis and social change: the famine of the 1890s in south-eastern Africa. Reg Environ Change 19, 2683–2695 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01563-y

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