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...

There has been a recent surge in research on long term African development. For this research agenda to be fruitful and its theories, it is crucial to have consistent estimates of economic change. This paper contributes with a new GDP time series for Ghana, 1891-1954. The series implies a...

This paper addresses the long-term impact of Sub-Saharan Africa's indigenous systems of slavery on its political and economic development, based on an analytical survey of the literature and data collected from anthropological records. We develop a theory to account for this based on the...

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...

In this paper we estimate the level and inequality of income for Bechuanaland Protectorate by constructing four social tables between 1936 to 1964 using colonial archives and anthropological records. We present a working hypothesis that there is need to further analyze Botswana's colonial era if...

The question whether institutions in Africa were shaped by the metropolitan identity of the colonizer or by local conditions is lively debated in the African economic history literature. In this paper we contribute to this debate by revealing regional differences in tax capacity in the...

To what extent did capitalism come into being in Africa before 1850? If by capitalism we mean the production of goods for exchange by capitalists who combine their own capital and land with labor bought from free workers without land, then the accumulative historical evidence tells us that only...

This paper contributes to a growing literature on understanding drivers of pre-industrial inequality by constructing social tables for colonial Ghana. Ghana is generally perceived as fairly equal in terms of income distribution, both historically and today. We show, however, that income...

The resource curse literature underscores the fact that extractive economies face challenges in diversifying their economies. What is less explored are the public finance challenges encountered in these economies when the extractive industries are completely privatized. Using a recently compiled...

European colonizers sought to extract cotton from sub-Saharan Africa. However, while some African farmers generated substantial cotton output, most others did not. I revisit a thesis proposed by John Tosh (1980), to argue that patterns of agricultural seasonality played a crucial role in these...