A Religion of the Rupee: Materialist Encounters in North-West Tanzania

This article examines the moral ambiguities of materialism that emerged with the coffee trade in northwest Tanganyika. The White Fathers, who played a prominent (often unintended) role in the growth of coffee markets, and the Haya villagers who became coffee farmers and traders alike understood the threat that commercial activity posed to non-commercial forms of value. The Fathers’ attitude to the trade was often at odds with what they perceived as their evangelical mission; equally interesting are the ways this quandary shaped the attitudes and practices of the Haya people in the twentieth century. The article describes the White Fathers’ anxieties about ‘civilization’, then turns to the concerns of the Haya farmers and traders as they developed in subsequent decades. The aim is to address the projects through which the moral ambiguities of the forms of materialism the coffee trade ushered in were – and were not – resolved, so as to illuminate the complex entanglement of colonizers and colonized. Bilbiogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]