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MAPPING AFRICAN HISTORY
PERIODS AND REGIONS
Gareth Austin 07/03/2013
Purpose of the lecture
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To offer a broadly chronological overview
Drawing your attention to some key points
while largely deferring discussion of the 6
controversies that I will introduce in the next
2 sessions
1. Problem of Periodization in
African History
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Limits of traditional tripartite, extroverted
division pre-colonial / colonial / post-colonial
divide
Is a non-Europcentric periodization possible
for Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole?
‘Pre-colonial’ is most of African history
Need for sub-divisions, even in colonial &
post-colonial periods
2. RELATIONS WITH EXTERNAL
WORLD
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Flows of goods, trade, ideas, selective adoption of
exotic cultigens: not so isolated
Perpetual trend of successively greater incorporation
in world market? Yes, mostly
Terms of incorporation in world market partly
determined by Africans
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rulers, merchants, producers
Even to some extent during colonial rule
Choice of production technique not explicable by
ignorance
World religions and Sub-Saharan
Africa
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Long history of Christianity and Islam south
of the Sahara
Important phases of widespread conversion
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Jihads in west African savanna C18th-C19th
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Including creation of Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1903)
Further spread of both Christianity and Islam in
C20
Key role of African agency in these
processes
3. PRECOLONIAL NINETEENTH
CENTURY: key processes
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Southern Africa: formation of Zulu kingdom
and its consequences for the region
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East Africa: enlargement of states, extension
of trade networks, & intensified slaving
West Africa: ‘legitimate commerce’ from 1807
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Debate about causes of mfecane
This the beginning of the modern economic
history of West Africa (Hopkins 1973)?
European Scramble for Africa 1879-c1910
4. SETTLER, PLANTATION &
‘PEASANT’ COLONIES
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The differences and why they mattered
Defined by land differences in land
ownership & use
Nature of a particular colony could change:
not fixed but contested
–
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Cases of Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, Kenya
Type of colonial economy affected welfare,
politics, & prospects of industrial growth
Contrasting Legacies
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‘Peasant’ (or rural capitalist) economies
better for African real wages and welfare
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Settler and plantation economies better for
growth of manufacturing
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See Bowden et al, Frankema
Southern Rhodesia, Belgian Congo as well as
South Africa
Not least, for political reasons
Contrasting Legacies (cntd)
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Mode of decolonization: threat or reality of armed
revolt in the settler economies
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Scope for African entrepreneurship: repressed in
settler/plantation colonies
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though partly constrained (by govt tolerance of European
business cartels) in peasant ones too
Land tenure: individual land ownership on former
settler lands, e.g. in Kenya
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not in the ‘peasant’ (or even plantation) colonies
See Bates, Beyond
General distinction between legacies
and continuities
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Not everything ‘inherited’ in 1960 was a
result either of colonial or even late precolonial changes
And changes during the colonial period were
not always the result of colonial rule
2. ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
SINCE INDEPENDENCE
Revisiting the ‘Growth
Tragedy’
Before Getting Too Gloomy…
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Note that most figures for African income per head
are misleadingly low
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And that mortality and literacy rates have greatly
improved since 1960 (Sender 1999)
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purchasing power parity: ‘PPP’ means that one international
$ has the same purchasing power over domestic GNP as
the US$ has over US GNP. For 1999, e.g., taking PPP
rather than current US dollar terms nearly triples the ratio of
African GNP p.c. from 1.6% to 4.7% of the US level.
underestimation of unmeasured economic activities (surely
greater in poorer than in richer countries)
And still more since 1945
And Further Warning
About Quality of the National Income
Accounts
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Accurate data-collection requires substantial state
administrative capacity
In economies with a preponderant ‘informal’ sector, both in
agriculture and outside, the GDP estimate depends very much
on assumption about the size of that (and the so-called
‘subsistence’) sector.
E.g.: in the following Tanzania graph, the drastic discontinuities
shown in the 1980s are very little to do with actual change &
mostly to do with decisions on what data to include (inclusion of
informal sector in 1987, & then downward revision of agriculture
estimates from 1988)
chain index
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TANZANIA Real GDP (Penn World Tables)
800
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100
0
5. LATE COLONIALISM AND
DECOLONISATION, 1945-60
From ‘Developmental
Colonialism’ to a
Scramble out of Africa
Post-1945 Colonialism: bigger
budgets, more urgency re
development
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Pressures within the colonies, from the metropoles &
internationally, to be more actively developmental
Modification/abandonment of doctrine of fiscal selfsufficiency
Top-down approach
Failure of the big projects, on the whole, most
notoriously in the case of the Tanganyika Groundnut
Scheme
Changing Treatment of African Labour:
from ‘peasants’ to ‘workers’
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Acceptance of permanence of African ‘workers’:
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Labour ‘stabilisation’ in mines: could be very delayed
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promotion of ‘responsible’ trade unions
Abolition of forced labour within French empire
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contrast Katanga, Zambia, & South Africa
Change of policies on trade unionism:
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no longer seen as peasants temporarily selling their labour
(Cooper 1996)
1945 law, proposed by Houphoet-Boigny
Decolonisation: suddenly brought
forward
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In 1945, Independence had been widely seen as
decades away
Why the much accelerated pace of change:
pressures from below and outside
Ghana set the pace (1948 riots): nationalism
became a mass movement for the first time in
tropical Africa
But Not All Colonists Were Ready to
Go
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White settlers hold out against Macmillan’s ‘winds of
change’:
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Portugal under Salazar held out against the trend
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with varying degrees of effectiveness from Kenya, Southern
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to (independent since 1910, but
white-minority rule) South Africa
Wars for independence began 1961; following revolution in
Portugal, independence of colonies recognised 1975
6. A POST-COLONIAL ‘GROWTH
TRAGEDY’?
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Rough Periodisation of SSA Economic Growth Since
1960:
Before 1973: mostly slow but positive growth per
capita (between 1 & 2% p.a.)
From 1973 (oil shock) or c.1975 to early 1980s:
contraction in the majority of countries
From early 1980s to mid-1990s (the decade of
Structural Adjustment): Africa’s real ‘growth tragedy’
From 1995-7 to c2008: pretty steady growth, usually
about 2% per head p.a.
All this is aggregated for the whole of SSA: but there
was much variation & even contrast in the records of
individual countries
Collier & O’Connell 2008
Variations Between Countries in
Economic Polices & Performance
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Performance of some hurt by war
A few did relatively badly before Structural
Adjustment but much better afterwards
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Many others did relatively well in the first 13-20
years after independence, and badly later
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especially Ghana, Uganda
Most dramatically Côte d’Ivoire
Only Botswana grew steadily from Independence to
now (well, to 2008 at least)
GDP figures tend to understate African real income
7. Post-Independence Politics: A Very
Rough Periodisation
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C1960: Independence of French & British colonies,
with formally democratic constitutions
Followed by shift towards civilian one-party states
(Kenyatta, Houphoet, Banda, Nyerere) and/or a
series of military coups (Nigeria, Ghana)
1990s-2000s mixture of internal & external pressures
for effective democracy
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changes of power via ballot box, e.g. Benin, Zambia, Ghana
And something of a proliferation of civil wars
Why Military Coups, And Why Then
Renewed Democratization?
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Contrasting trends in, roughly, the first and second
halves of the half-century since Independence
Specifically:
Why proliferation of military coups in 1960s-80s?
Why democratic revival, stronger than ever, in some
countries in 1990s-present?
Why? Responses to internal economic conditions, to
social changes, and/or to external pressures?
Wars
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Some countries were involved in independence
/liberation wars in much of 1960s-70s
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A few were involved in wars of secession for much
of the 1960s-90s
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esp. Ethiopia/Eritrea) or later (Sudan)
Or internal disorder, violence & eventually civil war
in 1967-2000s
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Portuguese colonies, Zimbabwe
Nigeria, Uganda; &, starting later, Liberia, Sierra Leone,
Cote d’Ivoire; also in 1990s-2000s Rwanda, Burundi and
Zaire-Congo)
Wars in SSA: first steps in analysing
their political economy
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Many countries have been essentially free of them:
so they need explanation, they are not routine
Their comparative frequency owes much to:
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(a) Change in military technology (from 1940s) has made it
easier for warlords & rebels to defy governments: cheap but
powerful weaponry the assault rifle & self-propelled artillery
(b) Failure of many governments to secure control over rural
areas and deliver services to them (Herbst)
8. GENDER DIVISION OF LABOUR:
‘female farming systems’?
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Traditional view of Africa (Boserup)
Precolonial divisions: female farming and spinning,
male weaving and long-distance trading?
Generalisations, to which there were important
qualifications, regional variations and exceptions
Colonial-period modifications: cash crops and
(where applicable) ploughs led to alterations in
gender relations
Male migrant labour
Legacies re distribution of income and access to
resources
FINALLY: LEGACIES IN THE MIND
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Present conceptions of the possibilities and
sources of development in Africa are
arguably affected by views of past
E.g. of whether independent African
(precolonial) economic history was purely
static, or determined by external relations