"This pioneering and celebrated work was the first, and remains the standard, account of the economic history of the huge area known as West Africa. This edition contains a substantial new Introduction that discusses the development of the subject in the past 50 years, evaluates the debate over...

Beyond its terrible toll in human lives and suffering, the Ebola epidemic has inflicted a measurable economic impact on West Africa in terms of forgone output, higher fiscal deficits, rising prices, lower real household incomes, and greater poverty. This impact results partly from the...