Reciprocal comparison and African history: Tackling conceptual eurocentrism in the study of Africa's economic past

African Studies Review

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 1-28

  Austin, Gareth ^a  

^a LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 43349090941     PISSN: 00020206     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/arw.2008.0009     Document Type: Review

References (149)

1. Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation." American Economic Review 91: 1369-1401.
2. Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2002. "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution." Quarterly Journal of Economics 118: 1231-79.
3. Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2005. "Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth." In Handbook of Economic Growth, edited by Philippe Aghion and Steven Dulauf, vol. 1a, 385-472. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
4. Alence, Rod. 1990-91. "The 1937-38 Gold Coast Cocoa Crisis: The Political Economy of Commercial Stalemate." African Economic History 19: 77-104.
5. Amin, Samir. 1976 (1973). Unequal Develapment: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism. Translated by Brian Pierce. New York: Monthly Review Press.
6. Arrighi, Giovanni. 1970. "Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia." Journal of Development Studies 3: 197-234.
7. Austen, Ralph E. 1993. "The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History." In Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, edited by Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, 89-110. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8. Austin, Gareth. 1996a. "'No Elders Were Present': Commoners and Private Ownership in Asante, 1807-96." Journal of African History 37: 1-30.
9. Austin, Gareth. 1996b. "National Poverty and the 'Vampire State' in Ghana: A Review Article." Journal of International Development 8: 553-73.
10. Austin, Gareth. 1996c. "Mode of Production or Mode of Cultivation: Explaining the Failure of European Cocoa Planters in Competition with African Farmers in Colonial Ghana." In Cocoa Pioneer Fronts since 1800: The Role of Smallholders, Planters and Merchants, edited by William Gervase Clarence-Smith, 154-75. London: Macmillan.
11. Austin, Gareth. 2002. "African Business in Nineteenth-Century West Africa." In Black Business and Economic Power, edited by Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola, 114-44. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press.
12. Austin, Gareth. 2003. "Moneylending and Witchcraft: The Moral Economy of Accumulation in Colonial Asante." Paper presented at the Modern Economic History Seminar, London School of Economics.
13. Austin, Gareth. 2005. Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Ghana, 1807-1956. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press.
14. Austin, Gareth. 2006. "The Political Economy of the Natural Environment in West African History: Asante and Its Savanna Neighbors in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." In Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa, edited by Richard Kuba and Carola Lentz, 187-212. Leiden: Brill.
15. Austin, Gareth. Forthcoming. "Resources, Techniques and Strategies South of the Sahara: Revising the Factor Endowments Perspective on African Economic Development, 1500-2000." Economic History Review.
16. Azarya, V., and N. Chazan. 1987. "Disengagement from the State in Africa: Reflections on the Experience of Ghana and Guinea." Comparative Studies in Society and History 29: 106-31.
17. Barber, William J. 1961. The Economy of British Central Africa: A Case Study of Development in a Dualistic Society. London: Oxford University Press.
18. Barro, Robert J. 1997. Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study. Cambridge: MIT Press.
19. Basu, Kaushik. 1997. Analytical Development Economics: The Less Developed Economy Revisited. Cambridge: MIT Press.
20. Bates, Robert H. 1981. Markets and States in Tropical Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
21. Bates, Robert H. 1983. Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22. Bates, Robert H. 1989. Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23. Bates, Robert H. 1990. "Capital, Kinship, and Conflict: The Structuring Influence of Capital in Kinship Societies." Canadian Journal of African Studies 24: 145-64.
24. Bates, Robert H. 1991. "Agricultural Policy and the Study of Politics in Post-Independence Africa." In Africa 30 Years On: The Record and the Outlook, edited by Douglas Rimmer, 115-29. London: Royal African Society.
25. Bates, Robert H. 1995. "Social Dilemmas and Rational Individuals: An Assessment of the New Institutionalism." In The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development, edited by John Harriss, Janet Hunter, and C. M. Lewis, 17-26. London: Routledge.
26. Bates, Robert H., V. Y. Mudimbe, and Jean O'Barr, eds. 1993. The Contributions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
27. Bernault, Florence. 2001. "L'Afrique et la modernité des sciences sociales." Vingtième siècle: Revue d'histoire 70: 127-38.
28. Boone, Catherine. 2003. Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29. Boserup, Ester. 1965. The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure. London: G. Allen and Unwin.
30. Boserup, Ester. 1970. Women's Role in Economic Development. New York: St. Martin's Press.
31. Bray, Francesca. 1986. The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Oxford: Blackwell.
32. Braudel, Fernand, 1984 (1979). Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century. Vol. 3: The Perspective of the World. London: William Collins.
33. Brenner, Robert. 1977. "The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism." New Left Review 104: 25-92.
34. Brewer, Anthony. 1980. Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
35. Byres, T. J. 1979. "Of Neopopulist Pipe-Dreams: Daedalus in the Third World and the Myth of Urban Bias." Journal of Peasant Studies 6: 210-44.
36. Carney, Judith A. 2001. "African Rice in the Columbian Exchange." Journal of African History 42: 377-96.
37. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
38. Chrétien, Jean-Pierre. 2003 (2000). The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History. Translated by S. Strauss. New York: Zone Books.
39. Coase, R. H. 1988 (1937). "The Nature of the Firm." In The Firm, the Market, and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
40. Coase, R. H. 1988 (1960). "The Problem of Social Cost." In The Firm, the Market, and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
41. Coase, R. H. 1988. "Notes on the Problem of Social Cost." In The Firm, the Market, and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
42. Coatsworth, John H. 1998. "Economic and Institutional Trajectories in Nineteenth-Century Latin America." In Latin America and the World Economy since 1800, edited by John H. Coatsworth and Alan M. Taylor, 23-54. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
43. Collier, Paul, and Deepak Lal. 1984. "Why Poor People Get Rich: Kenya 1960-79." World Development 12: 1007-18.
44. Collier, Paul, and Deepak Lal. 1986. Labour and Poverty in Kenya 1900-1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
45. Collier, Paul. 1993. "Africa and the Study of Economics." In Africa and the Disciplines, edited by Robert H. Bates, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Jean O'Barr, 158-82. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
46. Cooper, Frederick. 1993. "Africa and the World Economy." In F. Cooper et al., Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
47. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. 1969. "Recherches sur un mode of production africain." La Penseé 144: 61-78.
48. Crummey, Donald. 1980. "Abyssinian Feudalism." Past and Present 89: 115-38.
49. Curtin, Philip D. 1984. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
50. Deng, Gang. 1993. Development versus Stagnation: Technological Continuity and Agricultural Progress in Pre-Modern China. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
51. Destombes, Jérôme. 2006. "From Long-Term Patterns of Seasonal Hunger to Changing Experiences of Everyday Poverty: North-Eastern Ghana, c. 1930-2000." Journal of African History 47: 181-205.
52. Devereux, Stephen. 1993. Theories of Famine: From Malthus to Sen. Hemel Hempstead, U.K.: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
53. Diamond, Jarrod. 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. London: Chatto & Windus.
54. Eggertsson, Thráinn. 1990. Economic Behavior and Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
55. Eldredge, Elizabeth. 1993. A South African Kingdom: Nineteenth-Century Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
56. Ensminger, Jean. 1992. Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57. Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. 1997. "Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth among New World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the United States." In How Latin America Fell Behind, edited by Stephen Haber, 260-304. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
58. Evans, E. W., and David Richardson. 1995. "Hunting for Rents: The Economics of Slaving in Pre-Colonial Africa." Economic History Review 48: 665-86.
59. Fairhead, James, and Melissa Leach. 1996. Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
60. Farias, P. F. De Moraes. 2004. "Afrocentrism: Between Crosscultural Grand Narrative and Cultural Relativism." Journal of African History 44: 327-40.
61. Feierman, Steven. 1993. "African Histories and the Dissolution of World History." In Africa and the Disciplines, edited by Robert H. Bates, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Jean O'Barr, 167-212. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
62. Fenoaltea, Stefano. 1999. "Europe in the African Mirror: The Slave Trade and the Rise of Feudalism." Rivista di Storia Economica 15 (2): 123-65.
63. Field, M. J. 1960. Search for Security: An Ethno-Psychiatric Study of Rural Ghana. London: Faber.
64. Firmin-Sellers, Kathryn. 1996. The Transformation of Property Rights in the Gold Coast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
65. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.
66. Frank, Andre Gunder, and Barry K. Gills, eds. 1993. The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? London: Routledge.
67. Goody, Jack. 1971. Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa. London: Oxford University Press.
68. Goody, Jack. 1976. Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
69. Goody, Jack. 1982. Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
70. Goody, Jack. 1996. The East in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
71. Goody, Jack. 2004. Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. Cambridge: Polity Press.
72. Grafe, Regina, and Maria Alejandra Irigoin. 2006. "The Spanish Empire and Its Legacy: Fiscal Redistribution and Political Conflict in Colonial and Post-Colonial Spanish America." Journal of Global History 1 (2): 241-67.
73. Greif, Avner. 1989. "Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghbribi Traders." Journal of Economic History 49: 85-82.
74. Greif, Avner. 1997. "On the Interrelations and Economic Implications of Economic, Social, Political, and Normative Factors: Reflections from Two Late Medieval Societies." In The Frontiers of the New Institutional Economics, edited by John N. Drobak and John V. C. Nye, 57-94. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press.
75. Greif, Avner. 2006. Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
76. Guyer, Jane I. 2004. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
77. Hart, Keith. 1973. "Informal Economic Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana." Journal of Modern African Studies 11 (3): 61-89.
78. Helpman, Elhanan. 2004. The Mystery of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
79. Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
80. Hopkins, A. G. 1973. An Economic History of West Africa. London: Longman.
81. Hopkins, A. G. 1980. "Africa's Age of Improvement." History in Africa 7: 141-60.
82. Horton, Robin. 1985 (1971). "Stateless Societies in the History of West Africa." In Histoty of West Africa, vol. 1, edited by J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, 87-128. 3rd edition. Harlow, U.K.: Longman,
83. Inikori, Joseph E. 2002. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
84. Jamal, Vali, and John Weeks. 1993. Africa Misunderstood: Or Whatever Happened to the Rural-Urban Gap? London: Macmillan.
85. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil, and Jocelyn Létourneau, eds. 1985. Mode of Production: The Challenge of Africa. Canadian Journal of African Studies 19 (1).
86. Jones, E. L. 1988. Growth Recurring: Economic Change in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
87. Keen, David. 1994. The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983-1989. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
88. Krueger, Anne O. 1974. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society." American Economic Review 64: 291-303.
89. Lal, Deepak. 1983. The Poverty of "Development Economics." London: Institute of Economic Affairs.
90. Lal, Deepak. 1998. Unintended Consequences: The Impact of Factor Endowments, Culture and Politics an Long-Run Economic Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
91. Lal, Deepak. 2004. In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
92. Landes, David S. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: My Some Air So Rich and Some So Poor. New York: Norton.
93. Lewis, W. A. 1953. Report on Industrialisation and the Gold Coast. Accra: Government of the Gold Coast.
94. Lewis, W. A. 1954. "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour." Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies 20: 139-91.
95. Lipton, Michael. 1977. Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
96. Lonsdale, John. 1981. "States and Social Processes in Africa: A Historiographical Survey." African Studies Review 24: 139-225.
97. Lovejoy, Paul E., and David Richardson. 1999. "Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade." American Historical Review 104: 333-55.
98. Lovejoy, Paul E., and David Richardson. 2004. "'This Horrid Hole': Royal Authority, Commerce and Credit at Bonny 1690-1840." Journal of African History 44: 363-92.
99. Lowenberg, Anton D., and William H. Kaempfer. 1998. The Origins and Demise of South African Apartheid: A Public Choice Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
100. Manning, Patrick. 1987. "The Prospects for African Economic History: Is Today Included in the Long Run?" African Studies Review 30 (2): 49-62.
101. Manning, Patrick. 2003a. Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
102. Manning, Patrick. 2003b. "Africa and the African Diaspora: New Directions of Study." Journal of African History 44: 487-506.
103. McCann, James C. 2005. Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop 1500-2000. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
104. McCaskie, T. C. 1983. "Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History: 1, To the Close of the Nineteenth Century." Africa 53: 23-43.
105. McIntosh, Roderick, 2005. Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self-Organizing Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
106. Miller, Joseph C. 1988. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830. London: James Currey.
107. Mosley, Paul. 1983. The Settler Economies: Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900-1963. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
108. Murphy, Kevin M., Andrei Schleifer, and Robert W. Vishny. 1991. "Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?" American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings 83: 409-14.
109. Myint, Hlya. 1958. "The 'Classical' Theory of International Trade and the Underdeveloped Countries." Economic Journal 68: 317-37.
110. Myint, Hlya. 1973 (1964). The Economics of the Developing Countries. London: Hutchinson.
111. North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
112. North, Douglass C. 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Growth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
113. North, Douglass C., and Robert Paul Thomas. 1973. The Rise of the Western World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
114. North, Douglass C., William Summerhill, and Barry R. Weingast. 2000. "Order, Disorder, and Economic Change: Latin America vs. North America." In Governing for Prosperity, edited by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton L. Root, 17-58. New Haven: Yale University Press.
115. Peel, J. D. Y. 1987. "History, Culture and the Comparative Method: A West African Puzzle." In Comparative Anthropology, edited by L. Holy, 88-118. Oxford: Blackwell.
116. Penningroth, Dylan C. 2003. The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
117. Platteau, Jean-Philippe. 1995. "The Food Crisis in Africa: A Comparative Structural Analysis." In The Political Economy of Hunger, edited by Jean Drèze, Amartya Sen, and Athar Hussain, 445-553. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
118. Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
119. Reid, Richard J. 2002. Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda: Economy, Society and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: James Currey.
120. Richards, Paul. 1985. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology and Food Production in West Africa. London: Hutchinson.
121. Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture.
122. Runciman, W. G. 1995. "The 'Triumph' of Capitalism as a Topic in the Theory of Social Selection." New Left Review 210: 33-47.
123. Schoenbrun, David Lee. 1998. A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.
124. Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Diprivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
125. Sender, John, and Sheila Smith. 1986. The Development of Capitalism in Africa. London: Methuen.
126. Sherratt, Andrew. 1995. "Reviving the Grand Narrative: Archaeology and Long-Term Change." Journal of European Archaeology 3: 1-32.
127. Smith, Sheila. 1980. "The Ideas of Samir Amin: Theory or Tautology?" Journal of Development Studies 17 (1): 5-21.
128. Smith, Sheila. 1976. "An Extension of the Vent-for-Surplus Model in Relation to Long-Run Structural Change in Nigeria." Oxford Economic Papers 28: 426-46.
129. Sugihara, Kaoru. 2000. The East Asian Path of Economic Development. Osaka: Discussion Papers in Economics and Business, Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University.
130. Sutton, J. E. G. 1984. "Irrigation and Soil-Conservation in African Agricultural History." Journal of African History 25: 25-46.
131. Terray, Emmanuel. 1971. "Commerce pré-colonial et organisation sociale chez les Dida de Côte d'Ivoire." In The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa, edited by Claude Meillassoux, 145-52. London: Oxford University Press.
132. Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
133. Tignor, Robert L. 2006. W. Arthur Lewis and the Birth of Development Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
134. Tosh, John. 1980. "The Cash-Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Reappraisal." African Affairs 79 (314): 79-94.
135. Vansina, Jan. 1978. Children of Woot: History of the Kuba Peoples (Congo). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
136. Vaughan, Megan. 1987. The Story of an African Famine: Gender and Famine in Twentieth-Century Malawi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
137. Vaughan, Megan. 2006. "Africa and the Birth of the Modern World." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16: 143-62.
138. Wade, Robert. 1990. Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
139. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1976. "The Three Stages of African Involvement in the World Economy." In The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa, edited by Peter C. W. Gutkind and Immanuel Wallerstein, 30-57. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.
140. Warren, Bill. 1980. Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. Edited by John Sender. London: Verso.
141. Wariboko, Nimi. 1998. "A Theory of the Canoe House Corporation." African Economic History 26: 141-72.
142. Wickham, C. 1984. "The Other Transition: From the Ancient World to Feudalism." Past and Present 103: 3-36.
143. Vaughan, Megan. 1985. "The Uniqueness of the East." Journal of Peasant Studies 12 (2-3): 166-96.
144. Williamson, Oliver E. 1975. Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Anti-Trust Implications. New York: Free Press.
145. Williamson, Oliver E. 1985. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets and Relational Contracting. New York: Free Press.
146. Wong, R. Bin. 1997. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
147. Wrigley, E. A. 1987 (1972). "The Process of Modernization and the Industrial Revolution in England." In People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society, 46-74. Oxford: Blackwell.
148. Yarak, Larry. 1996. "Slavery and the State in Asante History." In The Cloth of Many Colored Silks: Papers on History and Society Ghanaian and Islamic in Honor of Ivor Wilks, edited by John Hunwick and Nancy Lawler, 223-40. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
149. Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. 1993. A Modern Economic History of Africa. Vol. 1: The Nineteenth Century. Dakar: CODESRIA.