1930s: (The Depression and the Crisis of Colonial Confidence — Self-Help Associations Springing Up Across the Continent, Small-Scale Artisan Movements Refusi…

1930s: (The Depression and the Crisis of Colonial Confidence — Self-Help Associations Springing Up Across the Continent, Small-Scale Artisan Movements Refusing Wage Employment, Widespread Disillusion Expressed Through Economic, Cultural, and Religious Associations, Colonial Administrations Establishing Marketing Boards to Fix Prices, the Move Toward State Intervention in Production, and the Fear That Peasant Farmers Would Opt Out of the Market Entirely Threatening the Entire Colonial Edifice): The global depression heightened levels of disillusionment and focused protest more sharply as peasant farmers recognized the injustices and cruel vagaries of the colonial economy. Self-help associations sprang up across the continent with economic, religious, and ideological motivations, while small-scale artisan movements were established by craftsmen refusing wage employment. Individually these associations were little more than irritations to colonial administrations, but collectively they represented a crisis of confidence in the colonial order — not manifest in any mass coherent movement, but in widespread disillusion and resentment expressed through a host of different organizations. The reaction of the colonial state was greater concern for government intervention, particularly in the rural economy and marketing sector. As the 1930s drew to a close, faith in the market had given way to belief that colonial government should become more closely involved in marketing exports, attempting to alleviate the impact of price fluctuations and thereby offset social unrest and political protest. Colonial administrations feared that peasant farmers would opt out of the market altogether, threatening not only the export economy but the tax revenue system — the effects of the global depression were seen to threaten the entire fabric of the colonial system. Marketing boards were established to fix prices paid to farmers and manage exports, while colonial agricultural departments identified inefficiencies in peasant farming techniques and grew concerned about the threat of environmental disaster in overcrowded areas. The colonial state, having created the conditions for crisis, now expanded its own reach to manage the consequences — the age of intervention had begun, and with it the unwitting enlargement of the very apparatus that African nationalists would one day seize.