World War II and the Exploitation of the Tanzanian Forests

The materiel demands of World War II changed British valuation of East African forests for resource extraction and timber production. Before the war, most East African hardwoods (which dominated the tropical landscape) could not find overseas markets because they were unfamiliar, they were expensive to transport, and they were located in inaccessible woodlands environments. Other products of the forests, including copal and rubber, had long been pushed out of international markets by plantation or synthetic substitutes.  During the 1930s Depression, the Tanganyika Forest Department was understaffed and played only a subsidiary role in colonial development.  World War II changed this. Conflict in the Middle East, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia created a sudden demand for timbers of all sorts for military construction and railway ties that made East African hardwoods suddenly valuable.  Wartime shortages of varnish resins and rubber led policy makers to seek these products from the East African forests, reviving nineteenth century industries that had long declined.  Africans responded to the wartime demand by entering the forests to tap rubber and copal, reviving skills that they had mastered in the early colonial period. African pit sawyers, part entrepreneurs, part workers, penetrated inaccessible landscapes to obtain hardwood timber for railway ties. Wartime demand led to a reversal of the moribund role of the forest department, and set the stage for a dramatic reshaping of the Tanzanian landscape following the war.
This paper is based on files from the Tanzanian National Archives, the British National Archives, the Oxford Forest Institute, and interviews with elders in Tanzania.