This paper explores the ways in which global resourceallocation affected the pattern of Japanese (and later East Asia’s)industrialisation, and how it eventually came to underpin the courseof Japanese imperialism and aggression in the 1930s.The Western impact on Asia during the second half of...

According to Patrick O’Brien, Smithian growth is a label which includes the formation and integration of markets for land, labour and capital as well as institutional frameworks for the discovery and diffusion of useful and reliable knowledge. The growth is expected to raise the standard of...

This paper explores the ways in which global resource allocation affected the pattern of Japanese (and later East Asia’s) industrialisation, and how it eventually came to underpin the course of Japanese imperialism and aggression in the 1930s.

This article examines the collusion between the only two major banks to operate in British West Africa for most of the colonial period after 1916, Barclays and the Bank of British West Africa. The companies’ records reveal that the alliance was more far-reaching than has previously been shown,...

The field of African economic history is in resurgence. This paper reviews recent and on-going research contributions and notes strengths in their wide methodological, conceptual and topical variety. In these strengths there is also a challenge: different methodological approaches may also...

While Ghana is a classic case of economic growth in an agricultural-export colony, scholars have queried whether it was sustained, and how far its benefits were widely distributed, socially and regionally. Using height as a measure of human well-being we explore the evolution of living standards...

Through a case-study of cocoa-farming in Ghana, this paper takes up the longrunning but recently neglected debate about the 'cash crop revolution' in tropical Africa during the early colonial period. It focuses on the supply side, using quantitative evidence as far as possible, to test the much...

This essay presents an economic history perspective on prospects for industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Gerschenkron-Amsden 'late development'/'late industrialization' approach has valuable insights for Africa, but is best set within Sugihara's longer-term, non-Eurocentric framework of...