"Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? This book advances a novel answer to this question by looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa: communities are better able to coordinate around basic...

We trace the development of human capital in today's Senegal, Gambia, and Western Mali between 1770 and 1900. European trade, slavery and early colonialism were linked to human capital formation, but this connection appears to have been heterogeneous. The contact with the Atlantic slave trade...

"Commercial Transitions and Abolition in West Africa 1630-1860 by Angus Dalrymple-Smith offers a fresh perspective on why the most important West African states and merchants who traded with Atlantic markets became exporters of commodities instead of slaves in the nineteenth century. This study...