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1 results

  • 2 - Aspects of economic history

  • Edited by A. D. Roberts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 July 1986, pp 77-139

  • Summary

    This chapter summarises the economic changes that took place in Africa. Half a century or more of active 'legitimate' commerce had pre-adapted the peoples of West Africa in varying degrees to the twentieth-century type of exchange economy. Gold production in South Africa represented over half of the world output in the 1920s, though it declined to about a third in the next decade. In East Africa, moreover, European artisans and small traders were confronted by unbeatable Asian competitors. The forced cultivation of cotton by peasant farmers in German East Africa was the trigger for the great Maji Maji revolt at the beginning of post-war period. Extension of the market had greatly enhanced the value of the marginal product of Africa's land and labour, but physical productivity had hardly altered. The ox-drawn plough had been widely adopted by African farmers in South Africa, but elsewhere they had rarely found it feasible or profitable.