People and the Products of Industrial Technology: Toward a Social History of the Motorcar in Colonial Zambia, 1890–1945

Informed by Actor Network Theory, this paper investigates the complex relationship between people and industrial technology in colonial Zambia through focussing on one product of industrial technology, the motor-car. Taking the motor-car to be an “actant” within the social networks that existed in Zambia, an overview is given of the state of current research regarding the social history of industrial technology, and the motor-car in particular. Elsewhere in Africa the relationship between colonialism and the bundle of science, industrial technology, and modernity, has proved to be an informative field of historical investigation. It is noted that there is currently next to nothing written on the relationship between people and automobiles in African history, a relationship which, as examples from the fields of economics, politics, and society and culture indicate, is of crucial importance in African history. By researching the archival, oral and published source material, available in Europe, and southern Africa, a social history is being written which seeks to provide an answer to the question: How and in what manner did the day to day life of people in Zambia change with the introduction of the motor-vehicle in the 20th Century? Taking this broad overview of the relationship between people and automobiles in Africa as a starting point, the paper intends to provide further insight into the relationship between people and industrial technology in the context of colonial Zambia.