Comment les sociétés traditionnelles deviennent-elles des sociétés modernes ? La situation coloniale constitue un terrain exceptionnel pour l'étude des conditions de ce passage. L'imposition de la violence — effective et (ou) symbolique — y présente un caractère radical qu'il est difficile de trouver ailleurs. Quand l'évolution d'une société est déterminée de l'interieur, elle se fait en général par glissements lents, complexes, par ajustements successifs qui noient le facteur décisif dans la masse des facteurs secondaires dont l'analyse le dis-tingue malaisément. Le phénomène colonial, au contraire, intrusion brutale d'une agression étrangère dans un système intégré, souvent intégriste, de groupes sociaux traditionnels, qu'il accule à la mutation, se présente à cet égard comme une sorte d'expérimentation.

Even a cursory survey of the relevant literature reveals a marked uncertainty on the part of scholars concerning the application of the term ‘peasant’ to therural population of Africa, either historically or in terms of contemporary analysis. Most writers either evade the issue, display analytical uncertainty, or forthrightly reject the term (i). These variations seem to indicate that at present we lack a theoretical basis adequate for the analysis of rural Africa. The formulation of such a theory is therefore a prime duty of africanists. We have to ask ourselves whether the phenomenon of apeasantry appeared in parts of Western Africa before the colonial conquest, and if so under what conditions. Further, we have to decide whether this phenomenon has been extended since those conquests and, again, in what circumstances. In short, this essay is concerned with a process of societal evolution (i.e., combining economic, social and political changes) which has included as one of its main features what is called here—purely for want of a better term—‘peasantization’, the process of becoming a peasant. The present discussion has a second focus, the relation between peasantization and various political forms which have emerged in rural Africa in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Like other social scientists, students of politics seem rarely tohave considered the implications of the use. of the word ‘peasant’ in discussing African phenomena (2). Just as the first part of this paper will deal with various theoretical questions related to peasantization, so the second part will concern itself with some of those implications.

Recently an evolutionary and international perspective has been applied to the study of nonindustrial areas which rejects the popular idea that all such places are, or once were, ‘traditional’ and will ‘modernize’ in much the same way that the West was once traditional and has modernized. This change in perspective requires that the nation-state give way to the more local region as a primary unit of analysis, so that we can examine the varied relationships between regional and international centers of marketing and control, as well as between the region and nation-state of which it is a part. It further suggests that no single model of economic and political development can be applied to different cases at different points in history. The process ofdevelopment in XVIIth century Britain differed in important ways from contemporary attempts which occur in the context of a world-wide economy dominated by established industrialpowers (1).

Before turning directly to fascism, we should recall certain facts that form the background to all that follows. In 1919, Italy, a country of about 35 million people, should be characterized neither as industrialized nor as underdeveloped, but as slowly and very unevenly industrializing. Still predominantly agricultural, the Italian peninsula can be divided into three distinct areas with markedly different social structures, each undergoing in very contrasting ways the twin transformations of the rise of industry and of intensive commercialized farming. The North was the most developed of the three areas, with the peninsula's most modern industrial enterprises heavily concentrated in the Milan-Genoa-Turin triangle, while commercial farming was centered in the fertile valley of the Po River. It is important to note, however, that even the North was still in a state of transition and that in the northern countryside more traditional systems of land tenure and cultivation still existed alongside some of the most mechanized farms in Europe. The other two areas of Italy—Center and South—were alike in being traditional societies less affected by modernization, though the Center of the peninsula and the South were very different social systems (1).

A process of Agrarian Reform offers a unique opportunity for the observation and analysis of the subjective world of a peasant population. Class conflict is often intensified, and the peasantry is brought into contact with previously remote or even unknown state institutions; some of the most fundamental assumptions of peasant culture are questioned and thus brought to the surface by new institutions, new patterns of authority and mdependence, and new economic and social relations within the peasantry itself. A variety of forms of economic organization, political relationships with landlords and with the outside world, either co-exist or emerge in rapid succession, creating a comparative framework ready-made for at least an approximation of the relationship between changes in institutions and economic structures and changes in consciousness, despite inevitable overlap and lag between different forms of consciousness.

One of the most controversial and complex questions which has aroused a good deal of scholarly interest in recent years has to do with the conditions necessary to transform the peasantry, or a significant portion of the peasantry, into a revolutionary force (I). In this article, I want only to discuss one of the most crucial, but neglected, variables—the revolution of communications which is breaking down the cultural isolation of the village.