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AFRICA AND THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN WORLD1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2006

Megan Vaughan
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Abstract

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The Commission for Africa, which reported in March 2005, drew attention to the enduring problem of poverty in Africa, but also reinforced the common perception that Africa has a troubled relationship with the ‘modern world’. This essay reviews the literature on Africa's long-term political and economic development, paying particular attention to the continent's insertion into the global system in the period described by C. A. Bayly as the ‘birth of the modern world’. It concludes that, though many of the continent's current problems arise out of recent policy failures, we should not ignore longer-term, structural elements of environmental, demographic and economic history, including the consequences (direct and indirect) of the slave trade.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 16 , December 2006 , pp. 143 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society2006

References

1 My thanks for all the perceptive comments and criticisms of this essay made by those present at the Royal Historical Society lecture and at a later presentation at the Centre for the History of Economics at Cambridge. It will be apparent that I have drawn heavily on the incisive work of both Gareth Austin and Frederick Cooper, as well as on that of my African history colleagues in Cambridge, John Lonsdale and John Iliffe. Chris Bayly's outstanding work inspired me to write this essay.