The level of agricultural productivity in Africa has been an almost perennial topic in academic research. Scholars that have analyzed the historical productivity of African agriculture have generally believed that the prospects...
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Summaries
The scramble for Africa stands out as a remarkable feat of European imperialism, and its motives and timing have been long debated (Pakenham 1992). In less than two decades (1884–1898), the lion’s...
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This PhD thesis analyzes and compares the development of the coffee sector on both sides of Lake Kivu, in the Eastern Congo and Western Rwanda, during the colonial period. The Kivu region...
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One of the central questions in African and global economic history is how West Africa contributed to economies outside the region. The debate has often focused on West Africa’s contribution to the...
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The arrival of Christian missionaries and the receptivity of African societies to formal education prompted a genuine schooling revolution during the colonial era. The bulk of primary education in the British colonies...
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In 1924, John Maynard Keynes complained that ‘perhaps the limit of the absurdity to which the Trustee Acts can lead, was reached early in this year when £2,000,000 was borrowed by Southern...
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The capacity of the state to collect taxes determines the scope for public goods provision, which in turn has consequences for economic development and well-being. Many post-colonial states in Africa, including Mozambique,...
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The impact of European trade and colonialism on the economic development of West Africa has been long debated. According to Moitt (1989), peanut production in the regions of Cayor and Baol (Senegal)...
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There is a big debate in African Economic History on the long-term economic consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Did it only impede growth, distort trust and retard state formation, or did...
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In recent years, there has been a revived interest in the study of historical inequality (Milanovic 2016, Piketty 2014). This paper contributes to the literature with a study of long-term trends in...
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