Pub Date : 2017-09-02DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1371587
Marianne H. Wanamaker
ABSTRACT This article uses data on relative incomes to measure the economic convergence (or lack thereof) of African American men over time, and reviews current research in economic history on the struggle for economic equality for African American men in the United States since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The contents of this paper were originally presented at the University of Stellenbosch Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past (LEAP) Lecture on 6 December 2016.
{"title":"150 Years of Economic Progress for African American Men: Measuring Outcomes and Sizing Up Roadblocks","authors":"Marianne H. Wanamaker","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1371587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1371587","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article uses data on relative incomes to measure the economic convergence (or lack thereof) of African American men over time, and reviews current research in economic history on the struggle for economic equality for African American men in the United States since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The contents of this paper were originally presented at the University of Stellenbosch Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past (LEAP) Lecture on 6 December 2016.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"211 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1371587","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42318970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-08-07DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1343660
L. Bruno
ABSTRACT The Malaysian palm oil sector is an example of how a developing country can manage to establish itself as a world leader in the production and processing of an agricultural crop. This paper examines the formative period (1970–1990) of the Malaysian palm oil industry by focusing on the productivity at the plantation level, the first level of production, to understand how this process influenced the establishment of the higher value-added refineries. The paper finds that the official productivity figures, the oil yield (metric tonnes of crude palm oil per hectare), is inconsistent and estimates more consistent productivity figures. In addition, the paper briefly considers labour productivity as the Malaysian palm oil sector is more labour-intensive than its competitors. The main finding is that the improvements in plantation productivity were crucial for the development of the palm oil processing refinery sector, which might hold important implications for other developing countries wishing to promote agricultural processing industries.
{"title":"Palm oil plantation productivity during the establishment of the Malaysian refinery sector, 1970–1990","authors":"L. Bruno","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1343660","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1343660","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Malaysian palm oil sector is an example of how a developing country can manage to establish itself as a world leader in the production and processing of an agricultural crop. This paper examines the formative period (1970–1990) of the Malaysian palm oil industry by focusing on the productivity at the plantation level, the first level of production, to understand how this process influenced the establishment of the higher value-added refineries. The paper finds that the official productivity figures, the oil yield (metric tonnes of crude palm oil per hectare), is inconsistent and estimates more consistent productivity figures. In addition, the paper briefly considers labour productivity as the Malaysian palm oil sector is more labour-intensive than its competitors. The main finding is that the improvements in plantation productivity were crucial for the development of the palm oil processing refinery sector, which might hold important implications for other developing countries wishing to promote agricultural processing industries.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"221 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1343660","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48242666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-07-18DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1340093
Paul Shaffer
ABSTRACT There are ongoing controversies about the effects of colonial-era policies on hunger – and the nature of hunger in precolonial societies – in the Global South which have proved difficult to adjudicate because of the fragmentary nature of empirical information. The twin facts of the relatively recent incorporation of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast into the British Empire (1896) along with an interesting assortment of data on hunger from the early colonial period allow for certain inferences to be drawn about these debates. The Northern Territories is an interesting case in that it is characterized by poor soil quality, variable and seasonal rainfall, minimal experience with cash crops, limited forced labour recruitment and the late introduction of direct taxation. Overall, the data do paint a picture of severe seasonal hunger in the early colonial period, circa 1900–40, but do not suggest that colonial policies or practices had a pronounced impact either way, pointing to the likelihood that seasonal hunger is a long-standing phenomenon which predates colonial rule.
{"title":"Seasonal Hunger in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 1900-40","authors":"Paul Shaffer","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1340093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1340093","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There are ongoing controversies about the effects of colonial-era policies on hunger – and the nature of hunger in precolonial societies – in the Global South which have proved difficult to adjudicate because of the fragmentary nature of empirical information. The twin facts of the relatively recent incorporation of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast into the British Empire (1896) along with an interesting assortment of data on hunger from the early colonial period allow for certain inferences to be drawn about these debates. The Northern Territories is an interesting case in that it is characterized by poor soil quality, variable and seasonal rainfall, minimal experience with cash crops, limited forced labour recruitment and the late introduction of direct taxation. Overall, the data do paint a picture of severe seasonal hunger in the early colonial period, circa 1900–40, but do not suggest that colonial policies or practices had a pronounced impact either way, pointing to the likelihood that seasonal hunger is a long-standing phenomenon which predates colonial rule.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"270 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1340093","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43398953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-04DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1327807
Bastiaan De Roo
ABSTRACT This article analyses the annual budgets of the Congo Free State to examine whether the broader fiscal patterns observed for British, French and Portuguese Africa can be found in Leopold’s colony; often considered a fiscal exception. The fiscal history of the Free State was unique. A history of the income composition of the state however reveals that Leopold’s revenue-raising strategies showed a lot of similarity with colonial taxation in British, French and Portuguese Africa. Leopold’s administration faced the fiscal challenge of ruling a vast, thinly populated, inaccessible colony that produced little taxable surplus, with little metropolitan support and limited access to international lending. To deal with this challenge, the Free State developed a minimalistic fiscal system that was based on the taxation of international trade and the African subject. Only during a commodity boom did this system generate sufficient income to cover colonial expenditure. The study of the not so exceptional case of the Free State hence supports the claim that the colonial scope to tax African colonies was fundamentally determined by local economic conditions and power relations, global demand for commodities and Metropolitan pressure to be financially self-sufficient.
{"title":"Taxation in the Congo Free State, an exceptional case? (1885–1908)","authors":"Bastiaan De Roo","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1327807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1327807","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the annual budgets of the Congo Free State to examine whether the broader fiscal patterns observed for British, French and Portuguese Africa can be found in Leopold’s colony; often considered a fiscal exception. The fiscal history of the Free State was unique. A history of the income composition of the state however reveals that Leopold’s revenue-raising strategies showed a lot of similarity with colonial taxation in British, French and Portuguese Africa. Leopold’s administration faced the fiscal challenge of ruling a vast, thinly populated, inaccessible colony that produced little taxable surplus, with little metropolitan support and limited access to international lending. To deal with this challenge, the Free State developed a minimalistic fiscal system that was based on the taxation of international trade and the African subject. Only during a commodity boom did this system generate sufficient income to cover colonial expenditure. The study of the not so exceptional case of the Free State hence supports the claim that the colonial scope to tax African colonies was fundamentally determined by local economic conditions and power relations, global demand for commodities and Metropolitan pressure to be financially self-sufficient.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"126 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1327807","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45278896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-04DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1327808
L. Greyling, G. Verhoef
ABSTRACT The savings-development nexus is a topical issue in current development literature. No study has yet explored this relationship in nineteenth-century ‘South African’ colonies. An historical analysis of the development of the savings’ trends in South Africa may assist in understanding development trends in the twentieth century. Apart from general descriptions of the nature of economic activity in the Cape Colony very little is known about the role of savings and financial sector development in the growing colonial economy. This paper describes and surveys the nature of financial markets in the Cape Colony between 1850 and 1909 and seeks to explain the relationship between savings and economic growth. Savings is defined in the broad sense of monetary and non-monetary savings and would be assumed to be a proxy for financial development in the Cape Colony. This paper contributes to the economic history literature on the colonial past of South Africa by using recently compiled data on the GDP (Greyling & Verhoef 2015) as well as monetary savings and non-monetary savings (livestock) to test whether the general view that ‘financial development is robustly growth promoting’ can be substantiated in the last half of the nineteenth-century Cape Colony. The Johansen vector error correction model technique is applied to determine the relationship between savings and economic growth. It is found that despite the expectations in the literature that financial deepening contributes to economic growth, the Cape Colony did not display such causal relationship in the period under review.
{"title":"Savings and economic growth: a historical analysis of the Cape Colony economy, 1850–1909","authors":"L. Greyling, G. Verhoef","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1327808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1327808","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The savings-development nexus is a topical issue in current development literature. No study has yet explored this relationship in nineteenth-century ‘South African’ colonies. An historical analysis of the development of the savings’ trends in South Africa may assist in understanding development trends in the twentieth century. Apart from general descriptions of the nature of economic activity in the Cape Colony very little is known about the role of savings and financial sector development in the growing colonial economy. This paper describes and surveys the nature of financial markets in the Cape Colony between 1850 and 1909 and seeks to explain the relationship between savings and economic growth. Savings is defined in the broad sense of monetary and non-monetary savings and would be assumed to be a proxy for financial development in the Cape Colony. This paper contributes to the economic history literature on the colonial past of South Africa by using recently compiled data on the GDP (Greyling & Verhoef 2015) as well as monetary savings and non-monetary savings (livestock) to test whether the general view that ‘financial development is robustly growth promoting’ can be substantiated in the last half of the nineteenth-century Cape Colony. The Johansen vector error correction model technique is applied to determine the relationship between savings and economic growth. It is found that despite the expectations in the literature that financial deepening contributes to economic growth, the Cape Colony did not display such causal relationship in the period under review.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"127 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1327808","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46325000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-04DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1330654
David Wuepper, J. Sauer
ABSTRACT There is now considerable evidence to suggest that historical events have had long-term impacts on economic outcomes in Africa. What is less widely studied is the potential for mitigating such impacts. We surveyed 400 pineapple farmers in Ghana and find that both the historical dependency on different crops and the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade predict income differences in 2013. However, not all farmers are affected equally by history. Using instrumental variables to identify causal effects, we find that human and social capital are pivotal for overcoming historically inherited constraints.
{"title":"Moving Forward in Rural Ghana: Investing in Social and Human Capital Mitigates Historical Constraints","authors":"David Wuepper, J. Sauer","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1330654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1330654","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There is now considerable evidence to suggest that historical events have had long-term impacts on economic outcomes in Africa. What is less widely studied is the potential for mitigating such impacts. We surveyed 400 pineapple farmers in Ghana and find that both the historical dependency on different crops and the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade predict income differences in 2013. However, not all farmers are affected equally by history. Using instrumental variables to identify causal effects, we find that human and social capital are pivotal for overcoming historically inherited constraints.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"177 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1330654","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48856282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT In the nineteenth century, railroads brought a substantial shift in trade and production worldwide. While this motivated underdeveloped economies to massively invest in this transportation technology, the literature on the impact of railroads includes mixed findings from a historical perspective. Using a new dataset on the population of judicial districts and railroads in the Ottoman Empire between 1881 and 1914, we examine the relationship between railroad access and economic growth in the local economies of a developing and little-known country on the eve of the First World War. Our empirical results confirm the population size expansion in the areas affected by railroads. This impact could be connected with economic growth in the Ottoman Empire, leading to higher employment opportunities and fertility rates, based on the arguments of historical research. To deal with endogeneity problems, we use an instrumental variable (IV) strategy. Our 2SLS results also indicate the presence of causality from access to railroads to population growth. The paper contributes to the previous literature by offering new empirical insights on the long debated topic about how transformation of transport networks induced economic growth in an agricultural economy facing drastic changes during the first globalization boom.
{"title":"Transportation infrastructure and economic growth in a dissolving country: (Ir)relevance of railroads in the Ottoman Empire","authors":"Avni Önder Hanedar, Sezgin Uysal","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2946286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2946286","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the nineteenth century, railroads brought a substantial shift in trade and production worldwide. While this motivated underdeveloped economies to massively invest in this transportation technology, the literature on the impact of railroads includes mixed findings from a historical perspective. Using a new dataset on the population of judicial districts and railroads in the Ottoman Empire between 1881 and 1914, we examine the relationship between railroad access and economic growth in the local economies of a developing and little-known country on the eve of the First World War. Our empirical results confirm the population size expansion in the areas affected by railroads. This impact could be connected with economic growth in the Ottoman Empire, leading to higher employment opportunities and fertility rates, based on the arguments of historical research. To deal with endogeneity problems, we use an instrumental variable (IV) strategy. Our 2SLS results also indicate the presence of causality from access to railroads to population growth. The paper contributes to the previous literature by offering new empirical insights on the long debated topic about how transformation of transport networks induced economic growth in an agricultural economy facing drastic changes during the first globalization boom.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"35 1","pages":"195 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45707731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2016.1261629
Bas van Leeuwen, Jieli van Leeuwen-Li, Peter Foldvari
ABSTRACT In recent decades it has been debated whether China’s growth performance is primarily driven by capital accumulation (more inputs) or rather by an increase in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth (better technology and institutions). The answer to this question may offer a glimpse into the future trends of China’s economic growth. If the perspiration factors are dominant, one should expect a slowdown in the growth of the Chinese economy in accordance with the traditional Solow model. If, however, TFP growth drives per capita GDP growth, one can expect a strong convergence of China toward the technological frontier. In this paper we combine historical, long-term analysis with quantitative methods to find out whether the effect of (both human- and physical) capital and TFP on growth changed over the last 90 years. While partly relying on existing data, lack of information required us to estimate a new dataset on human capital for the provinces of China between 1922 and 2010 which allows us to decompose the observed economic growth into accumulation driven and TFP driven parts. We find that general technological development improved steadily over the course of the 1990s and 2000s.
{"title":"Human Capital in Republican and New China: Regional and Long-Term Trends","authors":"Bas van Leeuwen, Jieli van Leeuwen-Li, Peter Foldvari","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2016.1261629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2016.1261629","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In recent decades it has been debated whether China’s growth performance is primarily driven by capital accumulation (more inputs) or rather by an increase in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth (better technology and institutions). The answer to this question may offer a glimpse into the future trends of China’s economic growth. If the perspiration factors are dominant, one should expect a slowdown in the growth of the Chinese economy in accordance with the traditional Solow model. If, however, TFP growth drives per capita GDP growth, one can expect a strong convergence of China toward the technological frontier. In this paper we combine historical, long-term analysis with quantitative methods to find out whether the effect of (both human- and physical) capital and TFP on growth changed over the last 90 years. While partly relying on existing data, lack of information required us to estimate a new dataset on human capital for the provinces of China between 1922 and 2010 which allows us to decompose the observed economic growth into accumulation driven and TFP driven parts. We find that general technological development improved steadily over the course of the 1990s and 2000s.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"1 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2016.1261629","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60048704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2017.1292460
Tirthankar Roy
ABSTRACT In the post-war world, India was one of the most protectionist countries. Protectionism originated in British colonial measures to design an industrialization policy in the 1920s. Whereas in the 1920s, protection was applied with discrimination, after independence in 1947, protection was offered without discrimination. The paper explains how this transformation came into being. It rejects the hypothesis now current that discriminating protection was dropped because it was a weak policy, and suggests instead that the aspirations of nationalistic businesses played a role.
{"title":"The Origins of Import Substituting Industrialization in India","authors":"Tirthankar Roy","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2017.1292460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2017.1292460","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the post-war world, India was one of the most protectionist countries. Protectionism originated in British colonial measures to design an industrialization policy in the 1920s. Whereas in the 1920s, protection was applied with discrimination, after independence in 1947, protection was offered without discrimination. The paper explains how this transformation came into being. It rejects the hypothesis now current that discriminating protection was dropped because it was a weak policy, and suggests instead that the aspirations of nationalistic businesses played a role.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"71 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2017.1292460","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42905952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2016.1261630
J. Andersson
ABSTRACT This study identifies and analyses common and country-specific patterns in the evolution of the state in francophone West Africa through a detailed comparison of long-term fiscal capacity between Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Senegal. The study finds common patterns of long-term growth in fiscal capacity in the four countries since the early colonial period, which is indicative of a process of long-term economic development. It also finds significant differences in the historical fiscal pathways between the individual countries in spite of geographic proximity and common colonial heritage, which can be explained by country specific variation in economic and political context and in particular the prospects of key export commodities. These differences provide reasons to be cautious about generalizations about the history of the ‘African state’ and its capacity.
{"title":"Long-Term Dynamics of the State in Francophone West Africa: Fiscal Capacity Pathways 1850–2010","authors":"J. Andersson","doi":"10.1080/20780389.2016.1261630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2016.1261630","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study identifies and analyses common and country-specific patterns in the evolution of the state in francophone West Africa through a detailed comparison of long-term fiscal capacity between Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Senegal. The study finds common patterns of long-term growth in fiscal capacity in the four countries since the early colonial period, which is indicative of a process of long-term economic development. It also finds significant differences in the historical fiscal pathways between the individual countries in spite of geographic proximity and common colonial heritage, which can be explained by country specific variation in economic and political context and in particular the prospects of key export commodities. These differences provide reasons to be cautious about generalizations about the history of the ‘African state’ and its capacity.","PeriodicalId":54115,"journal":{"name":"Economic History of Developing Regions","volume":"32 1","pages":"37 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20780389.2016.1261630","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48338318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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