Nature - autonomous learning

122 de-naturalisationNorthern Nigeria was (and remains) semi-arid and ‘extreme climaticvariability, particularly drought, is and was an intrinsic part of nature [inthis area]’ (Watts 1983: 247). This being so, how were peasant householdsable to survive drought periods when the hierarchical mode ofproduction in which they were embedded ‘creamed off’ a portion of theircrops annually? Here Watts emphasised the importance of the Hausa’s moraleconomy. While this moral order required tribute from households totheir overlords, at times of extreme climatic stress a norm of reciprocitywas activated wherein emirs, district and village heads would redistributestored food back down to the household level as and when necessary. Inthis way, Hausa society created a buffer that ameliorated the impactsof drought.All this changed subsequent to British colonisation of Nigeria from theearly twentieth century.The Hausa experienced major famines in 1914,1927, 1942 and 1951 – whereas they’d experienced virtually none thecentury before.While rainfall variability was no more (or less) extreme thanin previous decades,Watts argued that the imposition of a capitalist modeof production on the Hausa – achieved through colonial domination– made households far more vulnerable to the effects of drought. In brief,a capitalist mode of production is geared to the sale of commodities formoney with a view to making profit. It involves relations between thosewho own the means of production and those who work for them formoney. In addition to this ‘primary’ class relationship, there are ‘secondaryones’, also mediated by money (like those between landlords and tenants,or money-lenders and borrowers). Colonialism, whose heyday has nowpassed, involved the formal occupation of one territory by the governmentof another or its representatives. According to Watts, the capitalism–colonialism nexus transformed Hausa society in four main ways. First, thecolonial authorities promoted the cultivation of groundnuts and cottonamong peasant households, replacing the subsistence crops of sorghumand millet. Second, these crops were grown for export to Britain and elsewhere.Third,exchange in kind was supplanted by exchange for money, asHausa crops entered a cash economy extending well beyond Nigeria.Finally, in 1910 the British imposed a tax on households to be paid in cashnot in crops or labour.Together,Watts shows that these four changes conspired to remove thedrought buffer present in pre-capitalist, pre-colonial Hausaland. First,as households switched to cotton and groundnut production they lost