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Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa — Origins and Contemporary Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Samir Amin
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Extract

Contemporary Black Africa can be divided into wide regions which are clearly different from one another. But it is more difficult to analyse these differences – and to study their nature, origin, and effects – than to see them.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 503 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

Page 507 note 1 For further details, see my L'Accumulation à l'échelle mondiale (Paris, 1970), especially pp. 31, 165–8, and 341–72Google Scholar; also my article on ‘La Politique coloniale française à l'égard de la bourgeoisie commerçante sénégalaise’, in Meillassoux, Claude (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), pp. 361–76.Google Scholar

Page 507 note 2 This idea of the cumulative nature of technological progress, and the importance of the age of the social formation in assessing the significance of a mode of production to which it belongs, is stressed by Micheina, H. S., ‘The Economic Formation: notes on the problem of its definition’, I.D.E.P. paper, Dakar, 10 1971.Google Scholar

Page 508 note 1 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Cathérine, ‘Recherches sur un mode de production africain’, in La Pensée (Paris), 04 1969,Google Scholar rightly emphasises the decisive role which long-distance trade played in the constitution of some African states. Cf. Kodsy, Ahmad El, ‘Nationalism and Class Struggles in the Arab World,’ in the Monthly Review (New York), 07–08 1970Google Scholar; and also Pelletier, Antoine and Goblot, Jean-Jacques, Matérialisme historique et histoire des civilsations (Paris, 1969),Google Scholar who suggest this for Greece.

Page 509 note 1 Except for Egypt and Mesopotamia, and hence the frequent mistake of speaking of ‘Arab feudalism’ criticised by El Kodsy, loc. cit.

Page 509 note 2 The role and the nature of this trade were highlighted for the first time by Bovill, E. W., Caravans of The Old Sahara (London, 1933)Google Scholar, later revised as The Golden Trade of The Moors (London, 1958).Google Scholar

Page 510 note 1 Braudel, Fernand, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949).Google Scholar

Page 511 note 1 See my L'Accumulation à l'échelle mondiale, ch. 2, section 3.

Page 511 note 2 Barry, Boubacar, Le Royaume du Waalo, 1659–1859 (Paris, 1971, mimeo).Google Scholar

Page 513 note 1 Ibid.

Page 513 note 2 See Vansina, Jan, Introduction à l'éthnographie du Congo (Brussels, 1967),Google Scholar and Ballandier, G., La Vie quotidienne au royaume du Congo du XVI au XVIIIe siécle (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 513 note 3 See, inter alia, Hill, R., Egypt in the Sudan, 1820–81 (London, 1959)Google Scholar, Holt, P. M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–98 (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar, and Trimingham, J. S., Islam in the Sudan (Oxford, 1949).Google Scholar

Page 516 note 1 For further details, see my L'Accumulation à l'échelle mondiale.

Page 517 note 1 Boubacar Barry, op. cit.

Page 517 note 2 Rodney, Walter, ‘African Slavery and other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the context of the Atlantic Slave Trade’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), III, 3, 1966.Google Scholar

Page 517 note 3 Cathérine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘De la traite des esclaves à l'exportation de l'huile de palme et des palmistes au Dahomey, XIXe siécle’, in Meillassoux, op. cit. pp. 107–23.

Page 518 note 1 Diké, K. Onwuka, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–85 (Oxford, 1956).Google Scholar

Page 518 note 2 See Person, Yves, Samori (Dakar, 1970), 3 vols.Google Scholar

Page 518 note 3 This problem of the looting of natural resources is beginning to be studied with the present-day awareness of ‘environmental problems’, although the term is ambiguous.

Page 518 note 4 See my paper on ‘Le Modéle théorique de 1' accumulation dans le monde contemporain, centre et périphérie’, I.D.E.P., Dakar, 1971.

Page 519 note 1 Thus the structures established in the Gold Coast in 1890, which have characterised Ghana up to the present day, made their appearance in the Ivory Coast only from 1950, after the abolition of forced labour. See Szereszewski, R., Structural Changes in the Economy of Ghana, 1891–1911 (London, 1965)Google Scholar, and Amin, Samir, Le Développement du capitalisme en Côte d'Ivoire (Paris, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 519 note 2 See Horwitz, Ralph, The Political Economy of South Africa (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Gray, Richard, The Two Nations (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; Thion, Serge, Le Pouvoir pâle (Paris, 1969Google Scholar; and above all, Arrighi, Giovanni, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 519 note 3 Lewis, Arthur, Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour (Manchester, 1954).Google Scholar

Page 520 note 1 Arrighi, op. cit.

Page 520 note 2 I have analysed this colonial trade in my L'Afrique de l'Ouest bloquée (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar. See also Afana, Osende, L'Economie de l'ouest africain (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar; and Vanhaeverbeke, André, Rémunération du travail et commerce extérieur (Louvain, 1970).Google Scholar

Page 521 note 1 As Suret Canale does in L'Afriqu noire, l'ère coloniale (Paris, 1960).Google Scholar

Page 521 note 2 See my L'Accumulation à l'échelle mondiale, pp. 347–8.

Page 523 note 1 Berg, Elliot J., ‘The Economics of the Migrant Labor System,’ in Kuper, Hilda (ed.), Urbanisation and Migration in West Africa (Los Angeles, 1965)Google Scholar, reflects better than anyone else this non-scientific ideology. The conventional assumption is that migrations ‘redistribute’ one factor of production (labour) which originally was unequally distributed. If that were so, migrations would tend to equalise the rates of growth of the economies of the various regions. But we can see that they are everywhere accompanied by a growing disparity between rates of growth: the acceleration of growth per capita in the immigration zones, and its reduction in the emigration zones.

Page 524 note 1 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Cathérine, Le Congo française au temps des compagnies concessionnaires, 1890–1930 (Paris, 1971, mimeo)Google Scholar; and Merlier, R., Le Congo, de la colonisation beige à l'indépendance (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar