1807: Economic shocks, conflict and the slave trade

Abstract

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Droughts, conflict, and the African slave trade

“…Furthermore, I find that the relationship between climate conditions and conflict is strongest in the slave exporting regions of Africa. This is consistent with findings by Fenske and Kala (2017) that the suppression of the slave trade in 1807 by the British in West Africa increased the incentives for conflict in the slave exporting regions of West, West-Central, and East Africa. These facts suggest that societies in Africa adjusted their allocation of labor between agriculture and conflict in response to changes in the opportunity costs induced by climate conditions and that the slave trade may have exacerbated this relationship.…”

“…regions come fromNicholson (2001). Conflict locations are taken fromFenske and Kala (2017). Red crosses show unique locations of conflicts between 1801 and 1866, which may persist or occur across multiple years.…”

Is Africa Different? Historical Conflict and State Development

“…Others claim that the combination of the New World demand for slaves and a new gunpowder technology -known as the gun-slave cycle -increased raiding wars and slave exports (Rodney, 1972, Inikori, 1982, Law, 1991, Whatley, 2012. Fenske and Kala (2014) show that, in regions that became dependent on slave exports, disruptions to the slave trade produced short-run and long-lasting increases in intra-African conflict.…”

“…This variable has the key advantage over fiscal variables of being widely available across sample countries. For the intermediate outcome for civil conflict, we use the share of years from 1850 to 1899 in which Sub-Saharan African countries experienced intra-African conflict (i.e., conflict in which all belligerents were African) according to Fenske and Kala (2014). We focus on Sub-Saharan Africa for this outcome because our previous analysis does not detect any significant relationship between historical and current civil conflict outside of this region.…”

The legacies of slavery in and out of Africa

“…More broadly, these results suggest that geography can affect development through its interaction with past historical events. Fenske and Kala (2015) examine the interaction between the slave trade and climate. They compile a yearly panel of temperatures and slave exports and find that the latter declined in warmer years, which can be explained by the positive association between temperature and mortality and the negative association between temperature and agricultural productivity.…”