Edited by Gareth Austin

This article examines the collusion between the only two major banks to operate in British West Africa for most of the colonial period after 1916, Barclays and the Bank of British West Africa. The companies’ records reveal that the alliance was more far-reaching than has previously been shown,...

The appearance of the first two syntheses of the literature on the economic failure of 'statist' policies in post-colonial Ghana, to 1983, and the subsequent economic liberalization, is an opportune moment at which to consider the state of the debate about the political economy of the country...

The field of African economic history is in resurgence. This paper reviews recent and on-going research contributions and notes strengths in their wide methodological, conceptual and topical variety. In these strengths there is also a challenge: different methodological approaches may also...

While Ghana is a classic case of economic growth in an agricultural-export colony, scholars have queried whether it was sustained, and how far its benefits were widely distributed, socially and regionally. Using height as a measure of human well-being we explore the evolution of living standards...

type="main" <p>Through a case study of cocoa-farming in Ghana, this article takes up the long-running but recently neglected debate about the ‘cash crop revolution’ in tropical Africa during the early colonial period. It focuses on the supply side, to test the much criticized but never...</p>