Gareth Austin

Reciprocal Comparison and African History: Tackling Conceptual Eurocentrism in the Study of Africa's Economic Past

Abstract: This article argues for constructive responses to the dominance, in the analysis of African economic history, of concepts derived from Western experience. It reviews the existing responses of this kind, highlighting the fact that some of the most influential ideas applied to African economies, past and present, have been coined in the context not of Europe or North America but rather of other relatively poor regions formerly under European colonial rule. These “Third World” contributions have been enriching for African studies, though they have been duly criticized in African contexts, in accordance with the usual scholarly pattern. It is argued here that the main requirement for overcoming conceptual Eurocentrism in African history, in the interests of a more genuinely “general” social science and “global” history, is reciprocal comparison of Africa and other continents—or, more precisely, of specific areas within Africa with counterparts elsewhere. Pioneering examples of such comparisons are reviewed and, to illustrate the possibilities, a set of propositions is put forward from African history that may be useful for specialists on other parts of the world. The article concludes with suggestions for ways in which Africanists can best pursue the project of reciprocal comparison, and with a plea for us to be more intellectually ambitious.

Cash Crops and Freedom: Export Agriculture and the Decline of Slavery in Colonial West Africa

This article argues that the greatest economic and social transformations of the early colonial period in West Africa, the “cash-crop revolution”, and “the slow death of slavery” and debt bondage, had stronger and more varied causal connections than previously realized. The economic circumstances of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century West Africa delayed and diluted abolitionist measures. Indeed, the coercion of labour, through the exercise of property rights in people, contributed to the speed with which the cash-crop economies developed. Conversely, however, the scale and composition of cash-crop expansion did much to determine that the slave trade and pawning would be replaced by a consensual labour market. They also shaped the possibilities for peasant versus larger-scale organization of production, and the distribution of income by gender and between communities.

The Emergence of Capitalist Relations in South Asante Cocoa-Farming, c.1916-1933

The notion of capitalist relations in Ghanaian cocoa-farming is familiar, yet their development has been relatively little studied. In Amansie district, Asante, capitalist relations of production developed as a result rather than as a cause of the cocoa ‘take-off’, c. 1900–16. This paper examines their emergence, which occurred largely during the subsequent period of much slower growth and generally lower prices. The introduction and spread of regular wage-labour, the widening and deepening burden of rent on ‘stranger’ cocoa farms, the proliferation of ‘advances’, and the introduction of farm mortgaging are described, together with the accompanying decline of slavery, pawning, and other non-wage forms of labour. Colonial officials ineffectually deplored the growth of money-lending and, to a lesser extent, that of wage-labour. From the mid-1930s, however, the tendency towards greater separation of labour from control of the farm was partly reversed by a new insistence by northern labourers on the replacement of annual wage contracts by a managerial form of share-cropping. This demand was sustained against the opposition of farmowners and despite persistent unemployment, an achievement made possible by the migrants continued foothold in subsistence agriculture in their home areas. This case of migrant labourers successfully challenging the extension of wage relations raises questions concerning the relationships between commercial agriculture and ‘precapitalist’ social relations of production in Africa generally.

The biological standard of living in early nineteenth-century West Africa: new anthropometric evidence for northern Ghana and Burkina Faso

West Africans are on average shorter than Europeans today. Whether this was already the case at the end of the Atlantic slave trade is an important question for the history of nutrition and physical welfare. We present the first study of changing heights for people born mostly in what are now northern Ghana and Burkina Faso during the early nineteenth century. The dataset, not used before for anthropometry, documents men born between 1800 and 1849. Mostly purchased from slave owners, they were recruited into the Dutch army to serve in the Dutch East Indies. We find that height development was stagnant between 1800 and 1830 and deteriorated strongly during the 1840s. In international comparison and after taking selectivity issues into account, these Ghanaian and Burkinabe recruits were notably shorter than north-western Europeans but not shorter than southern Europeans during this period.

Local suppliers of credit in the Third World, 1750-1960

Part 1 Indigenous bankers before the Western impact: urban credit and market economy in Western India c1750-1850, G.D. Sharma and Peter Robb both a borrower and a lender be - from village money-lender to rural banker in proto-industrial Japan, Ronald P. Toby. Part 2 Opportunities and risks under the Western impact: towards a history of indigenous credit markets in Western Africa c1800-1960, Gareth Austin banking, credit and capital in colonial Natal c1850-1910, Robert Morrell et al agricultural credit in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina 1890-1963, Jeremy Adelman. Part 3 Regional suppliers of credit: British colonial policy and agricultural credit in Zanzibar 1890-1963, Chizuko Tominaga Chettiar capital and South-East Asian credit networks in the inter-war period, Rajeswary Brown capital markets, sharecropping and contestability - Singapore Chinese in the inter-war British Malayan estate rubber and pineapple industries, W.G. Huff.

Vent for surplus or productivity breakthrough? The Ghanaian cocoa take‐off, c. 1890–1936

Through a case-study of cocoa-farming in Ghana, this paper takes up the longrunning but recently neglected debate about the ‘cash crop revolution’ in tropical Africa during the early colonial period. It focuses on the supply side, using quantitative evidence as far as possible, to test the much criticised but never superseded ‘vent-for-surplus’ interpretation of the export expansion as a substitution of labour for leisure. The paper argues that while the model captured certain features of the case, such as the application of labour to underused land, its defining claim about labour is without empirical foundation. Rather, the evidence points to a reallocation of resources from existing market activities towards the adoption of an exotic crop, entailing a shift towards a new, qualitatively different and more profitable kind of production function. This innovation is best understood in the context of the long-term search of African producers for ways of realising the economic potential of their resource of relatively abundant land, while ameliorating the constraints which the environment put upon its use.

THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE AND LABOUR-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIALIZATION: ‘LATE DEVELOPMENT’ RECONSIDERED

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on ‘late development’, or more precisely, ‘late industrialization’: the idea that the industrialization of one part of the world altered the possibilities for industrialization elsewhere, such that later industrializations would take different forms from the original industrial revolution. For half a century, following Alexander Gerschenkrons account of late Tsarist Russia, the leading role of the state has been seen in the literature as the major characteristic of late industrialization in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The paper endorses the emphasis on the importance of the role of the state, but argues that a gap has emerged between the economic historiography of late industrialization before the First World War, and the political economy literature on the more recent industrializations, written by Alice Amsden and others. A number of issues are identified for further research, in the direction of a unified analysis of the history of late industrialization. The paper goes on to argue that the study of ‘late industrialization’ needs to be given a thematically wider and chronologically deeper frame. This possibility arises from the approach to very long-term economic development developed over the last decade or so by Kaoru Sugihara. In his view, Asian development was distinguished from Western development not just by the greater role of the state but by greater labour (increasingly accompanied by skill) – intensity. The paper explores the significance and problems of Sugiharas distinction of plural ‘paths’ of very long-term economic development, defined by characteristic technical and institutional responses to relative factor endowments. Questions arise, for example, in the context of the different experiences of Latin America and Africa, as well as from variations across Asia. It is suggested that a research agenda emerges that may allow us to enrich the analysis of ‘late industrialization’, and set it firmly in the context of longer-term economic development.

Local Suppliers of Credit in the Third World, 1750-1960: Introduction

This book explores an important but little researched aspect of the emergence of the world economy, and of the history of regional and local economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America; the historical development of sources of credit based in the Third World itself, rather than in the European and North American metropoles of the world economy. The existing literature has noted a variety of activities by moneylenders and local and regional bankers, ranging from exploitation of peasants to investment in manufacturing. There has also been considerable discussion of their interest rates and lending policies, their impact on production and their relationships with governments. But these studies relate to particular kinds of credit suppliers in their respective places and periods. Until now no single volume has addressed the question of their place in the development of the capitalist world economy as a whole.

DEVELOPMENTAL "PATHS" AND "CIVILIZATIONS" IN AFRICA AND ASIA: Reflections on Strategies for Integrating Cultural and Material Explanations of Differential Long-Term Economic Performance

In addressing the theme ‘Economic Performance of Civilizations’, I take as my starting-point Timur Kuran’s recent paper setting out a research strategy for explaining the economic performances of ‘huge populations’ over ‘long periods’ (Kuran 2009: 600). Kuran rejects solely cultural and solely material explanations, both in practice (he critiques specific examples) and on the general presumption that, in the long run, cultural and material variables must interact. He concentrates his criticism on materialist explanations, evidently because most of the scholarly literature now rejects purely cultural accounts. He suggests that research should focus on social systems of durable ‘complementary traits’ linking elements of cultural and material life, as a means of uncovering unintended and long-term as well as intended and immediate effects of particular cultural beliefs on the economic performance of the societies concerned. He argues that the unit of analysis within which this research can best be framed is about the broadest available: the ‘civilization’, which encompasses and links regions and states.