Prof. Lovejoy, you held the keynote at the 2016 Meeting of the AEHN hosted by the University of Sussex. It was also your first attendance of the Annual Meeting of the AEHN. What was...
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Year: 2016
Recent studies have uncovered long-term trends in welfare development in sub-Saharan Africa. But what do we know about the living standards of the large majority of rural dwellers in colonial Africa? Do...
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A few years ago, I took my graduate Economics students to the Cape Town Archives. Most of them had never been there, and it was fun to show them the original manuscripts...
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European settler expansion in Africa has been defined by Mosley as "colonisation of underdeveloped areas by European producers who became economically dependent on the indigenous population" (1983, p. 237). Europeans who decided...
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How have households in developing countries historically coped with shocks to their labor supply? Time is often the most valuable resource available to poor households, and its allocation across labor and other...
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Political institutions and the balance of political power strongly influence the evolution of economic institutions, making them important for economic growth. The nature of political institutions and the distribution of political power...
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The field of African Economic History is flourishing. The rising number of participants at the annual meeting of the AEHN, the increasing flow of articles in mainstream economic history journals and thriving...
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Introduction When discussing currency matters, colonial officials often observed that Africans had no pockets as an explanation for Africans’ use of strings of cowrie shells or beads as money carried around their...
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Patrick, you began your illustrious career in African economic history in the late 1960s. How has the field evolved over time? I completed my PhD in 1969 and published my first book,...
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Do infrastructure investments have the potential to transform Africa’s economic geography? Today, Africa suffers a massive infrastructure deficit (Calderón and Servén 2010). The World Bank estimates that sub-Saharan Africa has fewer than...
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Belief in witchcraft, broadly defined as the ability to use supernatural techniques to harm others or acquire wealth, is a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon which still represents a salient feature of daily life...
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Ewout, you were trained as a historian and economist and wrote your PhD thesis on inequality in Latin America. What made you invest so much of your professional energy in African economic...
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We are delighted to launch the AEHN’s new blog, Frontiers in African Economic History. The editorial team consists of Michiel de Haas, Kate Frederick (both Wageningen University) and Felix Meier zu Selhausen...
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