Labour, Land And Capital In Ghana

by Austin, Gareth

• ISBN13: 9781580461610
• ISBN10: 1580461611
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-30
• Publisher: Univ of Rochester Pr

Summary

This is a study of the changing rules and relationships within which natural, human and man-made resources were mobilized for production during the development of an agricultural export economy in Asante, a major West African kingdom which became, by 1945, the biggest regional contributor to Ghana's status as the world's largest cocoa producer. The period 1807-1956 as a whole was distinguished in Asante history by relatively favorable political conditions for indigenous as well as (during colonial rule) for foreign private enterprise. It saw generally increasing external demands for products that could be produced on Asante land. This book, which fills a major gap in Asante economic history, transcends the traditional divide between studies of precolonial and of twentieth-century African history. It analyses the interaction of coercion and the market in the context of a rich but fragile natural environment, the central process being a transition from slavery and debt-bondage to hired labor and agricultural indebtedness. It contributes to the broad debate about Africa's historic combination of emerging 'capitalist' institutions and persistent 'precapitalist' ones, and tests the major theories of the political economy of institutional change. It is written accessibly for an inter-disciplinary readership. Gareth Austin is a Lecturer in Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Joint Editor of the Journal of African History

Author Biography

Gareth Austin is a Senior Lecturer in Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Theories and debates : some tools for thinking about the history of property and markets in Asante and beyond	p. 23
Asante, 1807-1956 : the state, output and resources	p. 34
The changing relationship between inputs and output, 1807-1956	p. 72
Land tenure, 1807-1896	p. 99
The mobilization of labour, 1807-1896	p. 106
Capital and credit, 1807-1896	p. 135
Factor markets without free labour : the Nieboer hypothesis and Asante slavery and pawnship, 1807-1896	p. 155
Gender and kinship aspects of the social relations of production, 1807-1896	p. 171
Exploitation and welfare : class and 'social efficiency' implications of the property rights regime, 1807-1896	p. 181
Why was prohibition so long delayed? : the nature and motives of the gradualism of the British 'men on the spot'	p. 205
The decline of coerced labour and property in persons of practice : change from above and from below in colonial Asante, 1896-1950	p. 215
Cocoa and the ending of labour coercion, c. 1900-c. 1950	p. 236
Land tenure : what kind of transformation under cash-cropping and colonial rule?	p. 253
Capital and credit : locking farms to credit	p. 278
Free labour : family workers, the spread of wage contracts, and the rise of sharecropping	p. 304
Land in a tree-farm economy	p. 325
Capital in a tree-farm economy	p. 356
Free labour : why the newly-emerged regular wage contracts were eclipsed by sharecropping	p. 401
Conclusion	p. 431
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