Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa's New Landscapes, 1500–1999¶
James McCann (2001). Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa's New Landscapes, 1500–1999. Comparative Studies in Society and History. Society for Comparative Study of Society and History.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | synthesis review |
| Period studied | 1500–1999 |
| Regions | Africa (continental), South Africa (highveld 'maize triangle'), Lesotho/Basutoland, Ghana/Upper Guinea forest, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia |
| Themes | agriculture land, mining migrant labour, origins segregation, bantustans removals influx, comparative theory |
| Citation key | mccann2001 |
Argument¶
McCann traces maize's spread across Africa from c.1500 to its late-twentieth-century dominance. He argues that it moved from a niche vegetable and garden crop to a monocropped staple grain, and that this shift carried ambiguous consequences: higher yields and urban food supply, but also vulnerability to drought and nutritional disease. The argument runs through three regional vignettes: Upper Guinea forest state-building, the South African highveld/Basutoland, and highland Ethiopia. In the South African case maize, mine labour migration and industrial capitalism combined to produce a 'maize triangle' and two divergent landscapes: subsidised white commercial maize farms and impoverished, labour-poor black and Basotho farms. Cheap mealies fed mine labour and underpinned the apartheid economy. The article closes by questioning the optimistic 'African green revolution' narrative.
Evidence and method¶
Published secondary literature, notably Burtt-Davy (1914), Keegan, Murray, Wilks and Beinart & Coates. Travellers' and missionaries' accounts (Casalis, Arbousset, Salt, Stanley). Linguistic evidence from names for maize. Agronomic and genetic characteristics of maize varieties. Export, diet and production statistics (FAO/CIMMYT-type data). Lesotho National Archives material cited via a dissertation. The author's 1990s interviews and field visits in Ghana and Ethiopia.
Place in the debates¶
- Is the maize boom an 'African green revolution' or free-market miracle?. Sceptical. The author warns that maize monocropping trades diversity and resilience for vulnerability to drought, disease and weak markets.
- Causes of agrarian change on the highveld: labour scarcity and mechanisation (Habakkuk-type logic) versus state support (see Farm labour: mechanisation, labour shedding, wages and labour control). Argues that labour loss to the mines pushed farms toward low-labour maize and that wheat farms mechanised under labour costs. He also stresses subsidies from the mine-based economy for white farms, so both labour and state factors matter.
- African peasant response to markets and subsequent decline (rise and fall of the African peasantry) (see Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry). Basotho and black sharecroppers responded vigorously to mining markets after 1867. They were later undercut by dispossession (1913 Land Act), labour loss and state favouring of white farms, which turned them into subsistence labour-reserve farms.
- Chronology and origins of maize in Africa (pre-Columbian claims versus post-1500 arrival). Accepts post-1500 arrival via the Columbian Exchange. Cites the Jeffreys pre-1492 claim and rejects it implicitly.
Findings¶
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Maize is central to South African diets and cereal land use at the end of the twentieth century. (p. 2)
In South Africa itself, maize comprises 60% of all land planted in cereals and 40% of total calories consumed.
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Black farmers adopted maize before white farmers, who regarded it as a 'Kaffir' crop and took it up commercially only with the Hickory King dent variety and after black farmers had shown its profitability for feeding mining centres. (p. 11)
Only with the arrival of the American white dent variety “Hickory King” and its local descendants (such as Salisbury White) did white farmers take to maize as a major cereal crop
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In the main maize province in 1914 maize was a marginal crop, grown mostly by black sharecroppers. (p. 11)
In South Africa’s largest maize growing area in 1914, the Orange Free State, only 2.25% of the province’s area was planted to the crop, mostly by black sharecroppers.
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Diamond-mining demand created a large market response from Basotho farmers in the 1870s. (p. 16)
in 1873 alone Basutoland exported over 8,000 metric tons of grain, perhaps a third of it maize.
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Mine labour recruitment drew Basotho men out of farming rapidly. (p. 17)
In 1873 fifteen thousand Basotho men worked in South Africa’s diamond mines; in 1886 (the year of gold’s discovery on the Witwatersrand) the number had doubled.
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The 1913 Natives Land Act dispossessed black sharecroppers and favoured white commercial maize farms. (p. 17)
The 1913 Native Lands Act, a pillar of what in 1948 became apartheid policy, resulted in mass dispossesion of black sharecroppers and bolstered white farms investing in commercial maize production.
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Male labour migration feminised farming and shifted production from labour-intensive wheat to low-labour maize. (p. 17)
the feminization of agriculture shifted strategies away from high-labor, uncompetitive wheat—increasingly available more cheaply from overseas markets—to low-labor maize.
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Cheap maize fed the labour system that underpinned apartheid. (p. 18)
After 1948 cheap “mealies” continued to sustain the economic foundation of apartheid.
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Mine-economy subsidies financed the capital-intensive modernisation of white farms from the 1950s, in contrast to the homelands. (p. 18)
Since the 1950s, government subsidies from South Africa’s mine-based economy allowed white farms to invest in tractors, harvesters, anti-erosion measures, and post-harvest processing technologies
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Lesotho shifted from grain exporter to net maize importer. (p. 19)
The Lesotho economy, which had been a major grain exporter in the late nineteenth century, was, by the mid-twentieth century, a net maize importer.
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Maize remains the staple of black South Africans' diets, with substantial nutritional weight. (p. 21)
Mealies, consumed primarily by black South Africans, provide 35% of the nation’s carbohydrates, 15% of the fat, and 31% of the protein requirements in local diets.
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Data limitation: national maize statistics largely exclude black smallholders. (p. 27)
Most aggregate data on maize from South Africa reflects white commercial farms only; black smallholders are not included in national surveys.
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dowswell, Paliwal and Cantrell, Maize in the Third World (1996), maize calorie consumption data (Table 1) | secondary literature compilation | late twentieth century | Supplies the cross-country ranking of maize as a share of national calories, showing sixteen of the top twenty-three maize-consuming countries are in Africa. |
| Byerlee and Eicher (eds.), Africa's Emerging Maize Revolution (1997) | secondary literature compilation | 1950s-1990s | Source for maize's share of African consumption, human use versus feed, and Ghana's maize production growth since 1950. |
| Portuguese pilot's account (1540), Cape Verde, via Jeffreys, 'The History of Maize in Africa' | secondary literature compilation | 1540 | Earliest documentary reference to maize cultivation in Africa. |
| Juhé-Beaulaton, 'La diffusion du maïs sur les côtes de l'or et des esclaves' (1990), based on travel narratives | secondary literature compilation | 17th-18th centuries | Documents maize's rise on the Gold Coast and the decline of millet and sorghum against it. |
| Jan Van Riebeeck's reports and requests for seed, Cape 1652 (via Goodwin 1953) | secondary literature compilation | 1652 | Evidence that maize had not reached the Cape by 1652. |
| African-language names for maize (linguistic evidence; Wright 1949, Chiang 1997 unpublished) | secondary literature compilation | 16th-20th centuries | Vernacular names are used to infer routes and timing of maize's introduction. |
| Oral traditions, proverbs, folk tales and Ifá verse (Rattray 1923; Christaller; Babalola 1952; Abimbola 1997) | secondary literature compilation | 19th-20th century collections | Used as cultural evidence of maize's symbolic embedding in West African societies. |
| Soper, 'Roulette decoration on African pottery' (1985) – archaeological pottery evidence | secondary literature compilation | historic | Maize-cob roulette designs on pottery at Ife are used as material-culture evidence of maize's presence. |
| Burtt-Davy, Maize: Its History, Cultivation, Handling, and Uses (1914) | secondary literature compilation | to 1914 | Source for maize varieties (Cateto flint, Hickory King), vernacular names, and black farmers' early maize use in South Africa. |
| Portères (1955) and Miracle (1963, 1966) on maize types and introduction routes | secondary literature compilation | 1955-1966 | Supplies the arguments on flint versus floury maize routes and their adoption. |
| Early European travellers' accounts of East Africa (Bauhin 1623; Stanley 1878; Emin Pasha, ed. Schweinfurth 1888) | secondary literature compilation | 1623-1880 | Document maize's presence in Ethiopia and Uganda. |
| Wilks, Forests of Gold (1993), on forest fallow and clearance labour; Dupuis 1820 visit; Amanor (1994) fieldwork; Fairhead and Leach | secondary literature compilation | 15th-20th centuries | Provides the clearance-labour figures and the forest fallow system into which maize is slotted as the key crop. |
| Missionary diaries: Casalis (1833, Mes Souvenirs) and Arbousset (1840), Basutoland | secondary literature compilation | 1833-1840 | Show maize as a minor, vegetable-like crop within Basotho mixed cropping before the mineral revolution. |
| Basutoland grain export figures (1873, 1893) via Robertson (1987) and Murray (1981) | secondary literature compilation | 1873-1893 | Quantifies Basotho grain/maize export response to the Kimberley market. |
| Basotho mine labour numbers and Basutoland employment (Keegan 1986; Murray 1981) | secondary literature compilation | 1873-1920s | Establishes the draw of Basotho male labour to the diamond and gold mines and decline of agricultural employment. |
| South African Department of Agriculture Report, 1937 (cited in Keegan) | commission or official report | 1937 | Cited for the spread of dent varieties and mechanisation of maize farming on white farms. |
| Orange Free State area under maize, 1914 (via Burtt-Davy and Beinart and Coates) | agricultural census | 1914 | Shows maize was then a marginal crop mostly grown by black sharecroppers. |
| Gay, Gill and Hall (eds.), Lesotho's Long Journey (1995) survey data on male labour loss | household or labour survey microdata | 1990s | Survey data cited on the loss of male labour in Basotho farming. |
| Lesotho National Archives records on pellagra and kwashiorkor, via Tsikoane (1996) PhD | state archives | post-WWII, 1900-1980 | Supports the claim that pellagra and kwashiorkor rose with maize's share in the diet. |
| Bernstein, 'The Boys from Bothaville' (1999 paper) on South African maize exports and pricing | secondary literature compilation | 1920s-1930s | Source for maize export share and for the caveat that national maize data cover white farms only. |
| Travellers' accounts of Ethiopian maize (Salt 1805 via Valentia; Cecchi 1886) | secondary literature compilation | 1805-1886 | Dates maize's first appearance as a field grain and describes its flint type. |
| Ethiopian national cereal production shares (Watt 1988; Kassahun et al. 1990) | official statistical series | 1970-1991 | Quantifies the rise of maize's share of national cereal production during the revolution. |
| CIMMYT website, Africa regional page (South African maize area and production, breeding lines) | other | 1994-1999 | Source for South Africa's 1999 maize area share, output share, and breeding-line imports. |
| Author interviews and fieldwork (Twumasi-Afriyie, Kumasi 1997; Ethiopia Global 2000 visit 1998; farmer Gali Abba Gojjam) | author survey or fieldwork | 1997-1998 | Observational and interview evidence on current maize varieties, row planting, and seed recycling. |
| Smale, 'Maize is Life': Malawi's delayed green revolution (World Development 1995) | secondary literature compilation | 1995 | Source for Malawi maize share of land and calories and preference for local flints. |
| Audrey Richards, Land, Labour, and Diet in Northern Rhodesia (1939) | other | 1939 | Opening testimony of a Bemba man on maize as 'European' food, used as a framing device. |
Inference¶
Quantification: Illustrative figures.
Long-run narrative synthesis built on secondary literature, travellers' and missionaries' accounts, linguistic and oral-tradition evidence, and three regional case studies (Upper Guinea forest, South African/Basotho maize triangle, Ethiopia), supported by scattered statistics and the author's fieldwork.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Maize had become Africa's dominant staple by the late twentieth century, with the highest calorie shares in Zambia, Malawi and Lesotho. (p. 246) | Dowswell et al. country calorie table and Byerlee and Eicher volume. | Partial data |
| In South Africa, black farmers adopted flint and floury maize long before whites; whites embraced it only with Hickory King dent and after black farmers had shown its profitability in feeding mining centres. (p. 256) | Burtt-Davy, Orange Free State 1914 area figure and Beinart and Coates. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Kimberley and Witwatersrand mining markets reorganised highveld agriculture, turning maize from a garden vegetable into a commodity grain and Basutoland into a net grain importer by 1930. (p. 261) | Basutoland export figures (Robertson, Murray), mine labour numbers and Keegan. | Partial data |
| Male labour migration feminised Basotho agriculture and shifted farms from labour-intensive wheat toward low-labour maize, which fed both sides of the divided family and supported apartheid's cheap food base. (p. 262) | Keegan, Murray, Gay et al. survey data; mostly interpretive argument. | Partial data |
| By the 1930s-40s white and black farms diverged: whites with credit, price controls and subsidies mechanised, while black farms and Basutoland became labour-reserve subsistence producers. (p. 263) | 1937 Department of Agriculture report via Keegan, Beinart and Coates; no direct data on black farms. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Pellagra and kwashiorkor in Basutoland rose in direct proportion to maize's share of the diet and the decline of sorghum after the war. (p. 264) | Lesotho National Archives records cited through Tsikoane's dissertation. | Partial data |
| Maize was the key New World crop enabling forest fallow agriculture and state formation in the Upper Guinea forest from the sixteenth century. (p. 258) | Wilks, Amanor, Fairhead and Leach, Juhé-Beaulaton; author admits the argument is speculative. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Ethiopia's maize share of national cereal production rose sharply under the socialist government, from 15.3% in 1970-71 to 28.3% in 1983-84 and 48% by 1991. (p. 266) | Watt (1988) and Kassahun et al. (1990) production shares. | Partial data |
The author's caveats¶
Acknowledges that the documentary record of maize is 'maddeningly elusive', that introduction events went unremarked, that linguistic evidence is speculative pending a systematic survey, and that Wilks's formula is speculative. Also notes that most South African aggregate maize data reflect white commercial farms only, excluding black smallholders.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The South African section relies on secondary works and a few export and employment figures rather than systematic series on maize area, output, prices or consumption by race and region. Census of Agriculture data, Maize Board price and marketing records, and Chamber of Mines ration and compound feeding records would test the claims that maize underpinned cheap mine labour and apartheid's food base. The causal links between maize shares and pellagra or kwashiorkor also need the underlying archival health series. Many of these records existed then and survive in South African and Lesotho archives.
Replicability: Data poorly documented.