AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY最新文献

{"title":"Towards Banking Inclusion? The Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) in Southern Rhodesia, 1905–1945","authors":"Tapiwa Madimu, Enocent Msindo","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2019.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2019.0003","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The introduction in 1905 of the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) made banking generally accessible to Africans and white settlers in outlying districts. The bank emerged because of pressure from the press, white settlers residing in outlying districts, chiefly farmers, civil servants and small miners. The government acquiesced to this pressure with a view to then inculcate a saving culture. Although the POSB was primarily designed to benefit white settlers, it extended its services to Africans because of the assumption that Africans were hoarding coins and that this problem would be solved by extending banking services to them. More importantly, the ruling British South African Company (BSAC) also hoped to tap into a growing African agricultural based economy to complement the struggling mining sector. However, for many reasons, only a few Africans banked with the POSB, relative to the total African population in the country. The POSB's reluctant \"inclusive\" banking did not necessarily deracialize banking as Africans who banked with the POSB still experienced degrading treatment and were denied access to some facilities provided by the POSB. Moreover, alternative African economies were more lucrative and fully managed by the Africans themselves, hence the lower uptake of POSB banking services.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"47 1","pages":"54 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/aeh.2019.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48913707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Les femmes des monts Mandara dans l'economie informelle à Yaoundé","authors":"Jeremie Diye","doi":"10.1353/aeh.2019.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2019.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Résumé:La recherche d'un emploi et d'une meilleure condition de vie ont poussé beaucoup de ressortissants du septentrion camerounais à s'installer dans la ville de Yaoundé. Les petits métiers qui au départ pouvaient satisfaire les besoins d'une famille ne le sont pas aujourd'hui, ceci parce que le nombre de personnes à prendre en charge s'est considérablement augmenté ainsi que les besoins. C'est dans cette perspective que les femmes montagnardes autrefois se contentant des tâches domestiques se distinguent par leurs dynamismes dans le secteur des petits métiers pour travailler ensemble avec leurs maris et s'occuper de leurs familles. Ce travail porte sur l'apport de la femme au développement de la société. Il s'agit d'abord de montrer les facteurs qui ont poussé les femmes à s'investir dans les activités génératrices de revenus, ensuite de faire une description synoptique de ces activités et enfin d'analyser leur contribution dans la société. Cette étude se focalise davantage sur les sources orales et l'observation en plus des sources écrites et iconographiques.ABSTRACT:The search for employment and better living conditions have prompted many Cameroonian nationals to settle in the city of Yaoundé. The small trades that were initially able to satisfy the needs of a family are not today, because the number of people to be taken care of has considerably increased as well as the needs. It is in this perspective that the highlander women from the northern part of the country formerly satisfied with the domestic tasks are famous by their dynamisms in the small trades sector to work together with their husbands and look after their families. Women, given their contributions, are increasingly free to conduct their activities. This work studies the contribution of women to the development of society. The first step is to show the factors that led women to invest in income-generating activities, then to give a synoptic description of these activities and finally to analyze their contribution in the society. This study focuses more on oral sources and observation in addition to written and iconographic sources.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"47 1","pages":"116 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/aeh.2019.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42872998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Divergence In Rural Development: The Curious Case of Coffee Production in the Lake Kivu Region (First Half Twentieth Century)","authors":"Sven Van Melkebeke","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0008","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article offers new insight into the reasons for diversity in rural development and speaks to a major debate in economic history. The New Institutional Economy approach promotes the idea of long-term economic underdevelopment as a consequence of colonialism. However, this approach tends to over-generalize historical processes and over-simplify the reasons for divergence in development. Many historians have criticized such bold explanations. They stress that the diversity of local conditions and the varying reactions of people to colonialism and capitalism have resulted in different and regionally distinct paths of economic development. This article endorses such criticism and advances a complex multi-caused model in order to explain diversity in rural development. By highlighting and critically assessing several plausible explanations, this article argues that the development of coffee production in the Lake Kivu region primarily contrasted because of an interplay of differences in land availability (demography) and in indigenous precolonial landholding systems that were enhanced during the colonial period due to judicial differences (colony versus mandate).","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"117 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44268627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"Intimate Knowledge of the Country\": Factionalism in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast Administration","authors":"K. Asante","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0006","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article examines conflicts around questions of policy formulation and the intrusion of private interests in official actions which arose between factions in the early British colonial administration in the Gold Coast. The circumstances surrounding the transfer of administrative control from the Company of Merchants to the Colonial Office generated distrust and hostility between two British factions on the coast: merchants and metropolitan appointees. Mercantile resentment stemmed from fear that metropolitan control was likely to erode the gains of the previous administration and undermine their commercial interests, since newly appointed officials lacked local knowledge and had no commercial or personal ties to the Gold Coast. These circumstances provided fertile grounds for the conflicts that embroiled officials of the colonial administration from 1844. However, when allowed the opportunity to influence administrative policy, merchants adopted cordial relations with the new officials and readily offered their cooperation. This study suggests that we cannot assume that colonial administrations functioned as coherent units. Another implication is that uncritically accepting the \"colonizer\" and \"colonized\" dichotomy obscures many important differences within each category and blinds us to the important social and political implications of these internal divisions.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"63 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49013474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pressure Group Activity of Federated Chambers of Commerce: The Joint West Africa Committee and the Colonial Office, c. 1903–1955","authors":"A. Olukoju","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0007","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Existing studies of business pressure group activity have examined individual chambers of commerce. This article considers the neglected theme of federated metropolitan chambers of commerce in the British Empire with a case study of an important business pressure group—the Joint West Africa Committee (JWAC) of the Liverpool, Manchester, and London Chambers of Commerce. It highlights, on the one hand, the tension between colonial officials and merchants over the content and direction of colonial policy. It also examines, on the other hand, the negotiation of divergent interests among the collaborating chambers themselves. In all, the JWAC was beleaguered by frequent internal questioning of its efficacy and relevance, recurring duels with the imperial and colonial governments, and the challenges of two world wars and decolonization. Its history suggests the relative autonomy of the state vis-à-vis national capital.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"116 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66757987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Yankees in Indian Ocean Africa: Madagascar and Nineteenth-Century American Commerce","authors":"Jane Hooper","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0005","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Throughout the late eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, merchants from the newly independent United States established trading connections around the world. While there have been several recent publications that study these global exchanges, most studies have focused on American activities in Asia and overlooked the development of connections within the Indian Ocean and in East Africa. This article will examine how American merchants established themselves in Madagascar where local exigencies, particularly the existence of interregional exchange networks, shaped their commercial efforts. The possibility of tapping into these networks encouraged New Englanders to visit the port of Mahajanga where they formed partnerships with African, Arab, and Indian intermediaries who were essential to American successes. The history of Americans in Mahajanga thus reveals how contact with diverse political and cultural communities shaped their commercial efforts, as they sought to work closely with Indian Ocean merchant groups and distinguish themselves from their European rivals.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"30 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46623116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Of Vagrants and Volunteers During Liberia's Operation Production, 1963–1969","authors":"Cassandra Mark-Thiesen","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0009","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:A number of recent studies have highlighted how states across the African continent continued to revert to repressive labor practices for the sake of food production, cash-cropping, territorial expansion and infrastructural development during the late colonial and postcolonial period. Yet, the focus has mostly been on colonial continuities. This article investigates coercive labor as a deliberate but concealed part of a national rally for increased agricultural productivity in Liberia of the 1960s. Operation Production, which began in 1963, demanded the total participation of all of the populace and all sectors of the economy, yet, it especially targeted the farming population. The unfolding of the scheme was met with a vivacious response in both rural and urban society; amongst the rich and poor. However, different socioeconomic groups were requested to carry different burdens in the process. This exuberant reception, combined with the anchoring of the \"modern\" developmentalist narrative of integration and modernization in a way that spoke to many Liberians, was particularly useful for cloaking the systematic enforcement of repressive labor laws in the rural interior. Mechanisms such as new vagrancy legislation and the largely groundless declaration of a state of emergency further aided the expansion of compulsory agriculture at the hands of rural authorities.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"147 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44008667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Provisioning the Slave Trade: The Supply of Corn on the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast","authors":"R. Law","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0000","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The article studies the supply of corn (maize) by African societies for the provisioning of European slave-ships on the Gold Coast, focusing on one particular community, the Fante, in the late seventeenth century. Its principal evidential basis is the local correspondence of the English Royal African Company between 1681–99, recently published by the author. Aspects addressed include: the scale of the trade; its relation to the cycle of local agricultural production; the transportation of corn from the interior, and by sea along the coast; the identity of the African suppliers; the determination of prices; and the significance of the trade for the long-term growth of the domestic economy.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"1 - 35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49461083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Controversy, Facts and Assumptions: Lessons from Estimating Long Term Growth in Nigeria, 1900–2007","authors":"Morten Jerven","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0003","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article contributes to the debates surrounding \"New African Economic History\" by exploring the feasibility of constructing a time series of economic growth in Nigeria spanning the whole twentieth century. Currently most datasets for African economies only go back to 1960. The sources for their creation exist, but these valuable colonial data remain underutilized. This is an exploratory paper in a project aiming to create measures of economic growth through the twentieth century for a sample of African economies. The paper offers a systematic discussion of the different available datasets on population, agricultural production and income for the country. It finds that the existing data, often presented as facts, are more accurately described as projections based on assumptions. If these assumptions are already made in the production of the data, this precludes empirical testing of important questions. The main lesson is that any African economic history investigation must both begin and end with a critical analysis of the quantitative data, and must further be supported by careful qualitative evaluation.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"104 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44145971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Smallholders and Machines in the West African Palm Oil Industry, 1850–1950","authors":"Jonathan E. Robins","doi":"10.1353/AEH.2018.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AEH.2018.0002","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article uses colonial-era Ghana as a case study in the challenges of mechanization in West Africa's oil palm industry during the 19th and 20th centuries. While European industrialists pursued plantation-mill complexes in places like Congo and Southeast Asia, African entrepreneurs and government officials in British colonies focused on developing machines suitable for the small-scale producers who had built up the industry over the course of the nineteenth century. As inventors and officials discovered, however, machinery was unable to address the full range of economic, social, and natural challenges posed by oil palm trees. While some colonial observers alleged that racial characteristics or cultural conservatism were to blame for the failure of machines, the economic logic that underlay farmers' decisions was straightforward. Machines were too expensive and insufficiently productive, given prevailing prices for palm oil. Frustrated colonial governments tried to bridge the gap between larger mills and smallholder machines in the 1920s and 1930s, but with no success. By the time local factors shifted in favor of smallholder machines, colonial and national governments had moved on to large mills with accompanying plantations, leaving small-scale producers behind.","PeriodicalId":43935,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":"103 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/AEH.2018.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48456746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}