The business firm in Africa

Business History Review

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 87-110

  Tignor, Robert L ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34250857957     PISSN: 00076805     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0007680500036266     Document Type: Review

References (69)

1. There are, however, articles that trace African economic history. See, for instance, Grietjie Verhoef, "Informal Financial Service Institutions for Survival: African Women and Stokvels in Urban South Africa, 1930-1998," Enterprise and Society 2, no. 2 (2001): 259-96.
2. B. W. E. Alford and C. E. Harvey, "Copperbelt Merger: The Formation of the Rhokana Corporation, 1930-1932," Business History Review 54 (Autumn 1980): 330-58;
3. Colin Newbury, 'Technology, Capital, and Consolidation: The Performance of De Beers Mining Company Limited, 1880-1889," Business History Review 61 (Spring 1987): 1-42;
4. Raymond E. Dumett, "Sources for Mining Company History in Africa: The History and Records of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (Ghana) Ltd.," Business History Review 62 (Autumn 1988): 502-15.
5. See Jan Vansina, "Towards a History of Lost Corners in the World," Economic History Review 35 (May 1982): 165-78.
6. Other relevant articles include John Iliffe, "The South African Economy, 1652-1997," Economic History Review 52 (Feb. 1999): 87-103;
7. Chibuike Ugochukwu Uche, "Foreign Banks, Africans, and Credit in Colonial Nigeria, 0.1890-1912," Economic History Review 52 (Nov. 1999): 669-91.
8. On the gold-mining industry, see, for instance: Ian R. Phimister, "The Reconstruction of the Southern Rhodesian Gold Mining Industry," Economic History Review 29 (Aug. 1976): 465-81;
9. and Peter Richardson and JeanJacques van Helton, "The Development of the South African Gold-Mining Industry, 1895-1918," Economic History Review 37 (Aug. 1984): 319-40;
10. and Elaine N. Katz, "Outcrop and Deep Level Mining in South Africa before the Anglo-Boer War; Re-Examining the Blainey Thesis," Economic History Review 48 (May 1995); 304-28.
11. In the Journal of Economic History,
12. see, for instance, David William Cohen, "Agenda for African Economic History," Journal of Economic History 31 (Mar. 1971): 208-21;
13. J. E. Inikori, "Market Structure and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century," Journal of Economic History 41 (Dec. 1981): 745-76.
14. For a recent exception, see Stephanie Decker, "Decolonizing Barclay's Bank DCO? Corporate Africanization in Nigeria, 1945-1969," Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History 33 (Sept. 2005): 419-40.
15. See also Volker Wild, "Black Competition or White Resentment? African Retailers in Salisbury, 1935-1953," Journal of Southern African Studies 17 (June 1991): 177-90;
16. Roger Southall, "African Capitalism in Contemporary South Africa," Journal of Southern African Studies 7 (Oct. 1980): 38-70;
17. Leslie Bessant and Elvis Muringai, "Peasants, Businessmen, and Moral Economy in the Chiweshe Reserve, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1930-1968," Journal of Southern African Studies 19 (Dec. 1993): 551-92;
18. Andrew Torchia, "The Business of Business: An Analysis of the Political Behavior of the South African Manufacturing Sector under the Nationalists," Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (Apr. 1988): 421-45.
19. See A. G. Hopkins, "Imperial Business in Africa": Part I, "Sources," Journal of African History 17, no. i (1976): 29-48,
20. and "Imperial Business in Africa": Part II, "Interpretations," Journal of African History 17, no. 2 (1976): 267-90.
21. Hopkins followed this up with "Big Business in African Studies," Journal of African History 28: i (1987): 119-140.
22. See, for instance, Nimi Wariboko, "A Theory of the Canoe House Corporation," African Economic History 26 (1998): 141-72;
23. and Alusine Jalloh, "The Fula and the Motor Transport Business in Freetown, Sierra Leone," African Economic History 26 (1998): 63-81.
24. See, for instance, Zororo Muranda, "Market and Channel Preferences of Manufacturing Exporters: A Study of Zimbabwean Companies," Zambezia 28, no. 1 (2001): 67-84.
25. George Karekwaivenani, "A History of the Rhodesian Stock Exchange: The Formative Years, 19461952," Zambezia 30, no. i (2003): 9-34;
26. Ian R. Phimister, "Speculation and Exploitation: The Southern Rhodesian Mining Industry in the Company Era," Zambezia 30, no. 2 (2003): 178-89.
27. Caroline Piquet, "The Suez Company's Concession in Egypt, 1854-1956: Modem Infrastructure and Local Economic Development," Enterprise & Society 5, no. l (2004): 107-27.
28. Robert V. Turrell and J. J. van Helten, in "The Rothschilds, the Exploration Company and Mining Finance," Business History 28, no. 2 (1986): 165, argue that the African mining operations do not really fit the description of a "free-standing firm."
29. On the broader subject of colonialism, see also Geoffrey Kay, The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana: A Collection of Documents and Statistics, 1900-1960 (Cambridge, U.K., 1972);
30. Ralph A. Austen and Jonathan Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers: The Duala and Their Hinterland, c.1600-c.1960 (Cambridge, U.K., 1999);
31. and Ralph A. Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency (London, 1987)
32. and Northwest Tanzania under German and British Rule: Colonial Policy and Tribal Politics, 1889-1939 (New Haven, 1968).
33. Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 35 (Feb. 1982): 3.
34. See the following articles by Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson: "Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade," American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (1999): 333-55;
35. "The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa, c.16oo-181o," Journal of African History 42, no. i (2001): 67-89;
36. and "'This Horrid Hole': Royal Authority, Commerce and Credit at Bonny, 1690-1840," Journal of African History 45, no. 3 (2004): 363-92.
37. E. W. Evans and David Richardson, "Hunting for Rents: The Economics of Slaving in Pre-Colonial Africa," Economic History Review 48 (1995): 665-86.
38. Cherry Gerstel, "John Holt: A British Merchant in West Africa in the Age of Imperialism" (unpublished D.Phil, diss., Oxford University, 1959).
39. Paul E. Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade, 1700-1900 (Zaria, 1990).
40. See also a chapter on precolonial traders by Richard Reid in Political Power in Pré-Colonial Buganda (Oxford, 2002).
41. See, for example, Herbert Feis, Europe, the World's Banker to 1914, an Account of European Foreign Investment and the Connection of World Finance with Diplomacy before the War (New Haven, 1930);
42. John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism (London, 1961);
43. and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism (Cambridge, U.K., 1969).
44. Now revised as British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (London, 2000).
45. See, for instance, Gareth Austin, "Capitalists and Chiefs in the Cocoa Hold-Ups in South Asante, 1927-1938," International Journal of African Historical Studies 21, no. i (1988): 63-95;
46. R- J. Southall, "Cadbury on the Gold Coast, 1907-1938: The Dilemma of the 'Model Firm' in a Colonial Economy" (Ph.D. dissertation, Birmingham, U.K., 1982);
47. Rod Alence, "Colonial Government, Social Conflict and State Involvement in Africa's Open Economies: The Origins of the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Board, 1939-46," Journal of African History 42, no. 3 (2001): 397-416;
48. and Jan-Georg Deutsch, Educating the Middlemen: A Political and Economic History of Statutory Cocoa Marketing in Nigeria, 1936-1947(Berlin, 1995).
49. David Fieldhouse also made use of the records of the United Africa Company in Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization (Oxford, 1994).
50. Ian R. Phimister, Wangi Kolia: Coal, Capital, and Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1894-1954 (Johannesburg, 1994).
51. Peter Richardson, Chinese Mine Labour in the Transvaal (London, 1982);
52. Peter Richardson and J. J. van Helten, "The Development of the South African Gold Mining Industry, 1895-1918," Economic History Review 37, no. 3 (1984);
53. J. J. van Helten, "La France et l'Or des Boers: Some Aspects of French Investment in South Africa between 1890 and 1914," African Affairs 84: 335 (Apr. 1985): 247-63.
54. Debora L. Spar, The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994).
55. Robert V. Kubicek, Economic Imperialism in Theory and Practice: The Case of South African Gold Mining Finance, 1886-1914 (Durham, N.C., 1979).
56. This thesis was put forward for West Africa by A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973).
57. Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido and others argued along similar lines for South Africa: see S. Marks and S. Trapido, "Lord Milner and the South African State," History Workshop Journal 8 (1979): 50-81.
58. This work led to much controversy with Andrew Porter, who wrote "The South African War (1899-1902): Context and Motive Reconsidered," Journal of African History 31:1 (1990): 43-57.
59. For Portugal, the work of W. G. ClarenceSmith is very relevant; see his article, "The Myth of Uneconomic Imperialism: The Portuguese in Angola, 1836-1926," Journal of Southern African Studies 5:2 (Apr. 1979): 165-80.
60. Chibuike Ugochukwu Uche, "Foreign Banks, Africans, and Credit in Colonial Nigeria, c. 1890-1912," .Economic History Review 52, no. 4 (1999): 669-91.
61. Stuart Jones, "The Apogee of Imperial Banks in South Africa: Standard and Barclays, 1919-1939," English Historical Review 103 (1988): 892-916;
62. Stuart Jones, ed., Banking and Business in South Africa (London, 1988);
63. Alan Mabin and Barbara Conradie, eds., The Confidence of the Whole Country: Standard Bank Reports on Economic Conditions in Southern Africa, 1865-1902 (Johannesburg, 1987);
64. Grietjie Verhoef, "Informal Financial Service Institutions for Survival: African Women and Stokvels in Urban South Africa, 19301998," Enterprise & Society 2:2 (2001): 259-96.
65. Hubert Bonin, C.FA.O.: Cent Ans de Competition (Paris, 1987);
66. Hélène d'AlmeidaTopor, "French Trading Companies in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1960-1990," in The Multinational Traders, ed. Geoffrey Jones (London, 1998).
67. A. G. Leventis Foundation, A. G. Leventis, the First Twenty Years (Athens, 1998).
68. Byron D. Cannon, "Mortgage Banking Strategies in Egypt, 1880-1914: Crédit Fonceer Egyptian Investment and Local Borrowing," Business History 43:4 (October, 2001): 29-47.
69. Middle East Journal 44, no. 3 (1990): 383-98.