Wealth and Poverty in African History

Abstract

What is new in African economic history? A. G. Hopkins recently presented the “new economic history of Africa” to historians, and argued that it had appeared largely unnoticed by historians of Africa. Since some of the seminal contributions appeared in the early 2000s, there has arguably been a renaissance in African economic history. This chapter discusses some of the challenges of differences in approaches to the African past by economists and historians, and also some new empirical evidence that changes some of the dominant narratives of economic development in Africa.