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The Development of cotton in Northern Ivory Coast, 1910–19651

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Thomas J. Bassett
Thomas J. Bassett
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Extract

This article seeks to redress the largely contemporary bias and technologically deterministic approach of agricultural historians of cotton in francophone West Africa. It does this by arguing that the expansion of cotton since the 1960s has depended upon major socio-economic and cultural changes in agrarian production systems during the colonial period as much as on technological innovations in the post-colonial period. The study focuses on the political–economic and socio-cultural processes behind the emergence of an export-oriented, commodity producing peasantry among the Senufo of northern Ivory Coast. A periodization of cotton development is presented in which the gradual dissolution of precolonial production units and the gestation of smaller social units with new economic needs is emphasized. This restructuring of agricultural production systems is related to a complex interplay of internal and external factors, notably coercive state policies, the monetization of Senufo society and the internalization of commodity relations, conflicts between social groups and the direct intervention of foreign agribusiness in the productive process. Despite low levels of cotton output during the colonial period, the resultant transformation of production relations was crucial to the contemporary intensification of cotton growing.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , July 1988 , pp. 267 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

2 Contemporary accounts of cotton development in Ivory Coast, Cameroun and Togo, can be found respectively in Sawadogo, A., L'Agriculture en Côte d'Ivoire (Paris, 1977),Google ScholarLevrat, R., ‘La place du coton dans la vie des paysans du Nord-Cameroun’, Cahiers d'Outre-mer, XXXVII, 145 (1984), 33–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schwartz, A., Le paysan et la culture de coton au Togo (Paris, 1986).Google Scholar

3 IRCT (Institut de recherches du coton et des textiles exotiques) was founded in 1946 to conduct research and development on textile plants in France's colonies. CFDT (Compagnie française pour le développement des fibres textiles) was created in 1946 as a joint venture between the French government and private textile interests as an extension service and production company to promote the improved varieties developed by IRCT.Google Scholar

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