Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region in the world. But its current status has skewed our understanding of the economy before colonization. Rönnbäck reconstructs the living standards of the population at a time when the Atlantic slave trade brought money and men into the area, enriching our understanding of West African economic development.

An authoritative and comprehensive study of the palm oil trade.

Niumi, a small, little-known territory located on the bank of the Gambia River in West Africa, is seemingly far from the reaches of world historical events. And yet the outside world has long had a significant - and increasingly profound - impact on Niumi. This fascinating work shows how global events have affected people's lives over the past eight centuries in this small region in Africa's smallest country. Drawing on written and oral testimony, and writing in a clear and personal style, Donald R. Wright connects 'globalization' with real people in a real place. This new edition updates discussions of global history and African history based on current studies and new developments that have been factored into the interpretive framework. Reflecting on recent visits to Niumi, Wright extends the story into 2009, to consider the impact of global recession and domestic political repression under a regime in power for the past fifteen years. Punctuating the narrative are photographs, maps, and 'Perspectives' boxes on selected topics such as the sale of slaves five centuries ago, colonial sexism, the fate of press freedom, and how popular culture affects growing up in a traditional society. Throughout, the author deals with African history seriously, global trends critically, and human lives sensitively.

For a long time, economic research on Africa was not seen as a profitable venture intellectually or professionally-few researchers in top-ranked institutions around the world chose to become experts in the field. This was understandable: the reputation of Africa-centered economic research was not enhanced by the well-known limitations of economic data across the continent. Moreover, development economics itself was not always fashionable, and the broader discipline of economics has had its ups and downs, and has been undergoing a major identity crisis because it failed to predict the Great Recession. Times have changed: many leading researchers-including a few Nobel laureates-have taken the subject of Africa and economics seriously enough to devote their expertise and creativity to it. They have been amply rewarded: the richness, complexities, and subtleties of African societies, civilizations, rationalities, and ways of living, have helped renew the humanities and the social sciences-and economics in particular-to the point that the continent has become the next major intellectual frontier to researchers from around the world. In collecting some of the most authoritative statements about the science of economics and its concepts in the African context, this lhandbook (the first of two volumes) opens up the diverse acuity of commentary on exciting topics, and in the process challenges and stimulates the quest for knowledge. Wide-ranging in its scope, themes, language, and approaches, this volume explores, examines, and assesses economic thinking on Africa, and Africa's contribution to the discipline. The editors bring a set of powerful resources to this endeavor, most notably a team of internationally-renowned economists whose diverse viewpoints are complemented by the perspectives of philosophers, political scientists, and anthropologists.

A West African nation with an extremely rich political and cultural heritage, Senegal continues to serve as a role model for Francophone Africa despite its weak economic base and small population. Senegal's status as both a Sahelian and a maritime country brought its people into early contact with Islam and the West, making the country a crossroads where traditional African, Islamic, and European cultures met and blended. Sheldon Gellar begins his exploration of Senegal by examining the influence of Islam, Western imperialism, and French colonial rule and by tracing the country's political, economic, and social evolution since independence. This expanded second edition also analyses developments since 1983, looking in particular at the state of multiparty democracy, the 1993 national elections, the deterioration of the political climate following the assassination of the vice president of the Constitutional Council, the 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc, and the return of Abdoulaye Wade to the government coalition in 1995. Despite its inability to break out of severe and chronic economic crises, Senegal has managed to solicit high levels of foreign aid and has gained a significant profile on the international scene. Gellar closes with an evaluation of the social and cultural trends that have contributed to Senegal's emergence as one of Africa's most important cultural centers.

This watershed study is the first to consider in concrete terms the consequences of Britain's abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Why did Britain pull out of the slave trade just when it was becoming important for the world economy and the demand for labor around the world was high? Caught between the incentives offered by the world economy for continuing trade at full tilt and the ideological and political pressures from its domestic abolitionist movement, Britain chose to withdraw, believing, in part, that freed slaves would work for low pay which in turn would lead to greater and cheaper products. In a provocative new thesis, historian David Eltis here contends that this move did not bolster the British economy; rather, it vastly hindered economic expansion as the empire's control of the slave trade and its great reliance on slave labor had played a major role in its rise to world economic dominance. Thus, for sixty years after Britain pulled out, the slave economies of Africa and the Americas flourished and these powers became the dominant exporters in many markets formerly controlled by Britain. Addressing still-volatile issues arising from the clash between economic and ideological goals, this global study illustrates how British abolitionism changed the tide of economic and human history on three continents.

Provides the latest insights into, and interpretations of, the history of Africa

Containing records of some 25,000 slaving voyages between 1595 and 1867, this data set forms the basis of most of the papers included in this collection. Other papers offer quantitative analysis in the ethnicity of slaves, mortality trends and slaves' reconstruction of their identities.