ABSTRACT
The Zigua-speaking cultivators of northeastern Tanzania experienced a prolonged ecological and subsistence crisis between 1880 and 1940. The famines of the 1880–1940 era are crucial events in the modern history of lowland northeastern Tanzania. Meteorological conditions in the region have long seemed to suffice as the explanation for the occurrence of famine among the Zigua. If the precolonial Zigua were successful in preventing frequent famines, it was not because their environment was benign. Rather, it was because economic and social relationships granted insurance from scarcity. The diversity manifested in the variety of food sources was a major foundation of precolonial security from scarcity. Transfers of food out of redistributive networks and into markets threatened the people who depended upon patrons in periods of scarcity. To the contrary, reconstruction of the subsistence crisis which occurred between 1880 and 1900 suggests that colonial rule altered the nature of famine by rendering many individuals much more vulnerable to scarcity.
