Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T13:25:19.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Challenge of Studying Inflation in Precolonial Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2017

Klas Rönnbäck
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article studies the issue of inflation in precolonial West Africa. In a recent publication, it was argued that there was substantial inflation in West Africa as early as the seventeenth century. In this article, data from the Gold Coast is reported, in order to show that the prices of slaves, used in recent previous research to analyze inflation, is a poor proxy for the prices of other traded commodities. Contrasting the case of the Gold Coast to that of Dahomey, it is furthermore shown that different societies in West Africa experienced different trends around the same period of time, cautioning against generalizations about broader regions.

Résumé:

Cet article étudie la question de l’inflation en Afrique de l’ouest avant la colonisation. Dans une publication récente, on a fait valoir qu’il y avait une inflation substantielle en Afrique de l’ouest dès le XVIIe siècle. Cet article analyse les données de la Côte de l’Or afin de montrer que le prix des esclaves utilisé dans les recherches précédentes pour analyser l’inflation est un mauvais substitut pour comprendre le prix des autres marchandises échangées. En comparant le cas de la Côte de l’Or à celui du Dahomey, on constate en outre que différentes sociétés d’Afrique de l’Ouest ont connu des tendances différentes au cours de la même période; ceci nous met donc en garde contre les généralisations sur des régions plus vastes.

Type
Critical Historiography
Information
History in Africa , Volume 45 , June 2018 , pp. 5 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Austin, Gareth, “Commercial Agriculture and the Ending of Slave-Trading and Slavery in West Africa, 1780s–1920s,” in: Law, Robin, Schwarz, Suzanne and Strickrodt, Silke (eds.), Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2013), 248–257.Google Scholar
Barbot, Jean, and Hair, Paul E.H., Barbot on Guinea: Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678–1712 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1992).Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory, “The Price History of English Agriculture, 1209–1914,” Research in Economic History 22 (2004), 41–124.Google Scholar
Daaku, Kwame Yeboa, Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600–1720: A Study of the African Reaction to European Trade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar
Daaku, Kwame Yeboa, “Aspects of Precolonial Akan Economy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 5–2 (1972), 235–247.Google Scholar
Eltis, David, “The Slave Trade and Commercial Agriculture in an African Context,” in: Law, Robin, Schwarz, Suzanne & Strickrodt, Silke (eds.), Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2013), 28–53.Google Scholar
Feiberg, Harvey M., “Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 79–7 (1989), i–186.Google Scholar
Green, Toby, “Africa and the Price Revolution: Currency Imports and Socioeconomic Change in West and West-Central Africa during the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of African History 57–1 (2016), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Jane I., “Introduction: The Currency Interface and Its Dynamics,” in: Guyer, Jane I. (ed.), Money Matters: Instability, Values, and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1995), 1–33.Google Scholar
Hernæs, Per O., The Danish Slave Trade from West Africa and Afro-Danish Relations on the 18th-Century Gold Coast (Trondheim: Trondheim University, 1992).Google Scholar
Hogendorn, Jan S., and Johnson, Marion, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inikori, Joseph, “Africa and the Globalization Process: Western Africa, 1450–1850,” Journal of Global History 2–1 (2007), 63–86.Google Scholar
Inikori, Joseph, “The Development of Commercial Agriculture in Pre-Colonial West Africa,” African Economic History Network Working Paper 9 (2013).Google Scholar
Johnson, Marion, “The Ounce in Eighteenth-Century West African Trade,” Journal of African History 7–2 (1966), 197–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Marion, “The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa Part I,” Journal of African History 11–1 (1970), 17–49.Google Scholar
Johnson, Marion, “The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa Part II,” Journal of African History 11–3 (1970), 331–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kea, Ray A., Settlements, Trade, and Polities in the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
La Fleur, James D., Fusion Foodways of Africa’s Gold Coast in the Atlantic Era (Leiden: Brill, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, Robin, “Computing Domestic Prices in Precolonial West Africa: A Methodological Exercise from the Slave Coast,” History in Africa 18 (1991), 239–257.Google Scholar
Law, Robin, “Posthumous Questions for Karl Polanyi: Price Inflation in Pre-Colonial Dahomey,” Journal of African History 33–3 (1992), 387–420.Google Scholar
Law, Robin, “Cowries, Gold and Dollars: Exchange Rate Instability and Domestic Price Inflation in Dahomey in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in: Guyer, Jane I. (ed.), Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1995), 53–73.Google Scholar
Lebow, David E., and Rudd, Jeremy B., “Inflation Measurement,” in: Durlauf, Steven N. and Blume, Lawrence E. (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Basingstoke: Nature Publishing Group, 2008), 313–319.Google Scholar
LovejoyPaul, E. Paul, E., “Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria,” Journal of African History 15–4 (1974), 563–585.Google Scholar
Parkin, Michael, “Inflation,” in: Durlauf, Steven N. and Blume, Lawrence E. (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Basingstoke: Nature Publishing Group, 2008), 293–302.Google Scholar
Richardson, David, “Prices of Slaves in West and West-Central Africa: Toward an Annual Series, 1698–1807,” Bulletin of Economic Research 43–1 (1991), 21–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rømer, Ludvig Ferdinand and Winsnes, Selena Axelrod, A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea (1760) (Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Rönnbäck, Klas, “Climate, Conflicts, and Variations in Prices on Pre-Colonial West African Markets for Staple Crops,” The Economic History Review 67–4 (2014), 1065–1088.Google Scholar
Rönnbäck, Klas, “The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Social Stratification on the Gold Coast,” Economic History of Developing Regions 30–2 (2015), 157–181.Google Scholar
Rönnbäck, Klas, Labour and Living Standards in Pre-Colonial West Africa: The Case of the Gold Coast (London: Routledge, 2016).Google Scholar
Schwartz, Anna J., “Secular Price Change in Historical Perspective,” in: Schwartz, Anna J. (ed.), Money in Historical Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 78–109.Google Scholar
Siklos, Pierre, “Inflation and Hyperinflation,” in: Mokyr, Joel (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, volume 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 59–65.Google Scholar
Tobin, James, “Fisher, Irving (1867–1947),” in: Durlauf, Steven N. and Blume, Lawrence E. (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Basingstoke: Nature Publishing Group, 2008), 412–421.Google Scholar