1. POWER, POVERTY & WEALTH IN AFRICA FROM THE SLAVE TRADES TO THE PRESENT
Gareth Austin
21/02/2013

2. 1. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM TO BE EXPLAINED?
Africa’s poverty: historic but also relative
African economic history is also a story of development
Neither wealth nor inequality nor economic growth, were purely 20th-century innovations
Changing economic position relative to other major world regions over last 200 years

3. Insufficient development or active retardation?
Latter suggested by Dependency writers, esp. in late 1960s-70s:
‘the development of underdevelopment’ (A.G. Frank)
‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ (W. Rodney)
And recently, in a different way, by growth economists:
Acemoglu, Johnson & Robinson 2001, 2002, 2005
Specifically on Africa, Nunn 2007, 2008
(for a critical discussion, see Austin J of International Development 20:8, 2008)

4. Refine problem in terms of nature of capitalism in Africa?
Too much capitalism or too little?
But in which sense of ‘capitalism’?
Markets (what is a market?)
‘Expanded reproduction’
Private property rights & proletarianization

5. 2. THEORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Trends since the decade of Independence:
*‘Africanist’ historiography of late 1950s-early 1970s
- Modernizing states & economic rationality
*More recent trends:
- Focus on identities and ethnicity
- Pessimism re African states & economies Neglect of precolonial history (why??)
- Beginning (in early 2000s) of historical approaches to postcolonial history

6. African economic history: 2 major traditions
1) Market/Rational Choice theories
2) Marxist and (or v.) Dependency theories

7. Complication:
Scholars in each tradition have reached conclusions more in common with their ‘opponents’ than with their supposed intellectual kin:
‘Optimism’ of diffusionist tendency within market economics,
AND of ‘orthodox’ marxists (Warren, Smith & Sender)
‘Pessimism’ of dependency/world systems
AND of Acemoglu et al’s ‘Reversal of fortune’

8. What is the difference between orthodox marxism & dependency theory?
‘Tragic optimism’ (Sender) v. ‘radical pessimism’
i.e. capitalism as a bloody but progressive force v. as a bloody and poverty-perpetuating force
- e.g. Marx on India v. Dependency & World Systems approaches (Rodney, Amin, Wallerstein)

9. Rational-choice tradition
‘Market’ economic historiography, from 1950s (K. O. Dike 1956), to A. G. Hopkins (1973) and to present
‘New Institutionalism’ (Robert Bates & others) in political science, economic history & economics:
focus not on output and prices but on the rules (formal & informal) surrounding economic activity

10. 3. ANOTHER WAY OF DEFINING THE ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS
Resources: factor endowments
Quantity & quality
Static & dynamic perspectives
Culture:
Cultures hindering or favouring economic growth?
Institutions:
marxist & rational-choice perspectives
external impact on these
States
weakness (e.g. Goody, Herbst)
‘extraversion’ (Coquery-Vidrovitch, Bayart)

11. 4. ASYMETRIES IN AFRICAN STUDIES/AFRICAN HISTORY
Majority of research in African history done by scholars based outside the region
Ironically, more so now than when the subject was ‘new’, 1950s-60s
Concepts used in the study of African history, societies, economies, polities, predominately derive from studies of other continents
Though this less true than it was
Why exactly is it a problem? Discuss…

12. 5. THEMES OF THE COURSE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INCOME AND POWER
Obstacles to and opportunities for increasing individual/family prosperity
Obstacles to and opportunities for state-building
Character of ‘capitalist’ development in SSA
State and market in African history
African agency in African economic history
Paths of economic development in Africa