The Internationalization of Economic History: Perspectives from the African Frontier

Green, Erik; Nyambara, Pius S.

doi:10.1080/20780389.2015.1025744

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Instead, they are more likely to submit to and publish in local journals. In response, Green and Nyambara (2015) argue that the relative silence from African scholars is due to methodological differences. 'The roots of these differences are found in the developments of economic history in the Western world and not vice versa, i.e., in the cliometric revolution in the 1960s.…”

Section: Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Writes African Economic History?

Fourie¹

2019

Economic History of Developing Regions

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Much has been said about the rise, or 'renaissance', of African economic history. What has received far less attention is who is producing this research. Using a complete dataset of articles in the top four economic history journals, I document the rise in African economic history in the last two decades. I show that although there has indeed been an increase in papers on Africa, it has included little work by Africans. I then attempt to explain why this is so, and motivate why this should matter. The good news is that, mostly owing to efforts by the academic community, more is being done to encourage African inclusion. I conclude with a few suggestions on how to make more African scholars part of the renaissance of African economic history.

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Section: Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Writes African Economic History?

Fourie¹

2019

Economic History of Developing Regions

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“…A significant feature of this work is the use and/or construction of time series allowing for longitudinal quantitative studies of Africa's past. These developments have rightly been welcomed as a major step forward in our understanding of the long‐term social and economic developments on the African continent (for recent overviews, see Austin , ; Hopkins , ; Green and Nyambara ). Less discussed is the fact that many of these studies, inspired by institutional economics and institutional economic history, are grounded in Smithian growth models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Extensive to Involutionary Growth: A Dialectic Interpretation of the Boom and Busts of Cocoa Production in the Gold Coast

Green

2016

Journal of Agrarian Change

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African economic history has undergone impressive revitalization in the past decade. Much of the recent work is, quite naturally, inspired by developments in economic history at large, and increasingly -indirectly or directly -using markets as the organizing principle in understanding how economies evolve over time. More specifically, recent work assumes that markets create the possibility to use resources more efficiently, which, theoretically, enables economies to grow as long as institutions adjust and enable the population to exploit the arising opportunities. That is, the current works in African economic history are to a large extent grounded in Smithian growth models, labelled after Adam Smith's work on the mechanisms of long-term growth. This paper critically discusses the explanatory value of the Smithian growth models for understanding the long-term economic development in Africa. The latter is best described as recurrent growth episodes, and we argue that while Smithian models can account for initial periods of growth, they fail to explain why the growth was not sustained. We use the boom and busts of cocoa production in Ghana in the twentieth century as a case in point. We show that the decline in cocoa production was not caused by state policies distorting the functions of the markets, as the Smithian growth models suggest. Instead, the decline in production was an outcome of changes in the ecological and institutional conditions that caused the initial growth. The irony is that it was the initial growth in cocoa production that altered the conditions, making further growth in production impossible. We capture these changes -for the first time ever -by combining the concepts of forest rents and involutionary growth in an African case.

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Research on Africa’s History and Development—A Review

Hillbom

Green

2019

An Economic History of Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

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The Internationalization of Economic History: Perspectives from the African Frontier

Cited by 5 publications

References 36 publications

Who Writes African Economic History?

Who Writes African Economic History?

From Extensive to Involutionary Growth: A Dialectic Interpretation of the Boom and Busts of Cocoa Production in the Gold Coast

Research on Africa’s History and Development—A Review

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