ABSTRACT
The role of factor endowments and institutions as drivers of socio-economic change is a central theme in economic history (see, for example, the Brenner debate on the fall of feudalism in Europe, Aston and Philpin 1985). The common approach is to identify either factor endowments or institutions as triggers of change (Acemoglu et al. 2001, Engerman and Sokoloff 2002, Austin 2008). The conventional view is that factor endowments, at least in pre-industrial societies, in the long run affect the institutional structure, though the process is not straightforward due to political and cultural factors (North 1990). That is, institutions and factor endowments are interdependent and the puzzle is to identify the causality within the structure of interdependence. This chapter is an attempt to relate factor endowments with institutions from a specific theoretical angle. The chapter discusses to what extent land concentration in the Shire Highlands of southern Malawi during the early colonial period (Nyasaland from here) created specific institutions of labour control and to what extent this determined agricultural growth on European controlled tobacco farms. Although the focus is on the Shire Highlands (see Figure 9.1), references will be made to European tobacco farming in the central region of Nyasaland in order to further emphasize the arguments of the chapter. Map of Shire Highlands https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203387894/5f91e6b0-ce10-4fae-bcc7-9c17c75e2e17/content/fig9_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (source: Chirwa 1997: 266).
