Jamie Monson's Africa's Freedom Railway is an important contribution to the expanding field of Sino-African Studies. The book's argument not only demonstrates the importance of documenting the history of the Cold War outside of the dominant American and Soviet paradigm, but also reveals the potency of socialist notions of development for many newly independent nations during the 1960s and 1970s. By showing how the TAZARA railroad epitomized Chinese investment policy to other developing nations under the rubric of Third World solidarity, Monson dissects the difficulties in translating this theory into practice. She achieves this through interviews with both Tanzanian and Chinese railway workers on different aspects of labour relations, through documentation of aid statistics, and through analysis of the political pressures to finish the railway as a testament to the capacity of the “poor helping the poor.” Furthermore, because of the book's sustained focus on the impact of the railway on the everyday lives of many Tanzanians and Zambians who lived along the corridor, Monson's narrative includes how the social and geographic topography of the Freedom Railway's corridor evolved after the completion of the project in 1975.
Monson first shows how the railway was originally conceived as a Pan-African project that would break Zambian and Tanzanian dependence upon the transportation systems of white settler regimes and Portuguese colonies in the south. Due to World Bank reluctance to fund a project that they thought was, as Monson writes, “a political approach to railway development,” rather than one based on Western “rational economic decision-making,” the Chinese government became Tanzania and Zambia's lender of last resort. The Chinese government's growing rivalry with the Soviet Union allowed for this investment project in Africa to signal their arrival as a player on the world diplomatic stage. As Monson explains, this “anti-hegemonic model of African development” was enacted through China's “Eight Principles Governing China's Economic and Technical Aid to Other Countries,” espoused during Zhou Enlai's 1963–64 tour of Africa. This document holds the seeds for the controversial Chinese policies of non-intervention and respect for state-sovereignty that govern investment activities in contemporary Africa, and Monson does well to reveal its anti-imperial roots.
A focus on labour relations between Chinese managers and African workers, and on living conditions along the railway corridor dominates the first half of the book. Monson outlines how, due to the Chinese emphasis on labour-intensive models of development instead of capital-intensive models, the project provided a great number of manual, but often strenuous jobs for many Tanzanians and Zambians. There is a wealth of details about the daily interactions between the two parties: from the emphasis on worker solidarity through hard work that would provide an alternative to the “colonial and neo-colonial African work experience,” to cultural interactions including movie nights and plays. Monson details how these interactions, both in the work and leisure spheres, were often vulnerable to self-imposed segregation between the two groups. However much Nyerere's policy of ujamaa or “familyhood” echoed Maoist notions of Third World solidarity, Monson shows how the rhetorical persuasiveness of these views did not always translate into on-the-ground reality.
The second part of the book details the evolution of the “Ordinary Train” after the completion of the project and its impact on the livelihoods of many Tanzanians and Zambians who lived along the corridor. Scholars of China will find the second half more focused on Tanzanian internal migration patterns, the use of the train for the transfer of goods, and the role the railway played in the transition from Nyerere's socialist policy of ujamaa and villagization to the current wave of neo-liberalism and structural adjustment. Some of the strengths of this analysis are Monson's meticulous documentation of parcel receipts from various stations to outline “the details of exchange patterns and social networks,” as well as a discussion of industrialization's effects on the topography within the corridor.
Monson's qualitative approach means she relies heavily on interviews with workers from both sides of the railway project. This methodology also means that the book focuses on the changes in daily life for many Tanzanians and Zambians. Scholars looking for a grander political history detailing the international Cold War context of this Sino-African exchange will find that Monson is more interested in exposing the effect the People's Railway had on the people themselves. Furthermore, she not only chronicles a history of a development project in the “Third World,” but also engages with the history of modernization outside of its normal linkage with a capitalist economic system. The overall effect of this analysis is a much-needed update on the history of this exchange, which provides the context to understand the full scope of current Chinese private-sector involvement in Tanzania and Zambia, and also in the rest of Africa.
