Africa's involvement in the changing world economy has been a long one, and its effects on the lives of Africans have been profound. Samir Amin and W. W. Rostow, Felix Houphouet-Boigny and Samora Machel, would hardly dispute such a statement. But the question of whether this involvement has led Africans along a road toward material and social progress or into a dead end is very much in dispute. The title of this paper is the same as that of the introductory section of S. Herbert Frankel's classic study of 1938, Capital Investment in Africa. Becoming part of the world economy, for Frankel (1938: 1-3, 7), entailed the diffusion of Europe's capital, technology, ideas, and “civilized” form of government to closed, static, and undifferentiated economies. Now, writers such as Andre Gunder Frank (1967), Samir Amin (1974a, 1976), Walter Rodney (1972), and Immanuel Wallerstein (1979) stress instead the inexorable logic of a capitalist world system, whose effects on Africa are stifling instead of liberating. Both views share a unitary conception of the world economy, the first through a smug assumption that existing economic structures are part of civilization, and the second through an argument that sees change in Africa as a reflection of the growth of capitalism in Europe. The first conception of a world economy defined Africa's role as little more than holding back progress on a predetermined road; the second implied that Africa's influence on the world economy was not nearly so great. In the 1960s, scholars of Africa reversed such biases for a time. Especially among historians, an Africanist perspective emphasized “African activity, African adaptations, African choice, African initiative” (Ranger, 1968: xxi).

Africa and the World Economy

The British reduction of Lagos in 1851, their establishment of a semi-protectorate under the consuls, and the annexation of 1861 were due to a complex of causes, partly British, partly African: the movement to suppress the slave trade and to prevent its revival under the guise of contract labour; the encouragement of legitimate trade; the need to protect British and immigrant interests; missionary ambition; French rivalry; the rift in and subsequent weakness of the monarchy; the disordered state of the interior; the Dahomean threat to Abeokuta. Benjamin Campbell, the first substantive consul, laid the foundations of British rule, while his short-lived successors Brand and Foote helped to persuade the British Government that it was desirable and feasible to effect the transition to a colony. The consular decade at Lagos was a time of change which foreshadowed many of the issues of the Partition and was the first step in the making of Nigeria.

The Lagos Consulate, 1851–1861: An outline

Since the beginning of the modern state system only a few select nations have achieved great power status. But what can account for their rise? The presence of existing great powers would suggest that aspiring states should encounter formidable obstacles that would render their success implausible. In some cases extant great powers sought to counter the rise of a new peer, but the historical record also reveals that incumbents sometimes did not contest the rise of potential competitors. Thus, great powers have pursued two divergent strategies: contestation and nonintervention. How then do great powers decide on which policy to implement? This dissertation advances the argument that a great power’s military strategy is premised on its national interests. It argues that the reason incumbent powers rarely preempt the rise of aspiring powers is because of the low level of threat they pose to states. Incumbent great powers are far more concerned about contemporary rival powers since they possess the immediate capacity to undermine a state’s interests. The Preemptive Paradox: The Rise of Great Powers & Management of the International System by Jeffrey Philip Treistman B.A., University of Colorado, 2003 M.P.P., Harvard University, 2010 M.A., Syracuse University, 2012 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science. Syracuse University December 2017 © Jeffrey Philip Treistman

/pdf/the-preemptive-paradox-the-rise-of-great-powers-management-59nkdvl0vg.pdf

The Preemptive Paradox: The Rise of Great Powers & Management of the International System

The economic transformation of the Bagisu of Eastern Uganda, 1904-1962.

(2000). Des Historiens et des histoires, pour quoi faire? L’Histoire africaine entre l’etat et les communautes. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des etudes africaines: Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 337-374.

Des Historiens et des histoires, pour quoi faire? L’Histoire africaine entre l’état et les communautés

R HOPKINS is right in emphasizing that economic factors were important in British expansion into the hinterland of Lagos. He is by no means the first person to have pointed this out. Nor has he really answered the question which Robinson and Gallagher and others studying imperialism from the European end are trying to tackle, viz.: why did these economic factors which failed to move the British inland in the I 850's or I 86o's have so much success in the I 88o's and I89o's? Dr Hopkins replies that there was trade depression in Lagos in the I 88o's, that this depression, apart from heightening competition among traders of different nationalities, was the cause, not the result, of the wars in the Yoruba hinterland; that the wars in turn provoked the imposition of a British settlement aimed at improving Lagos trade; and that the Lagos merchants in their period of depression had the influence in London, which they did not have before, to move the British government to action. This series of paradoxes deserves closer scrutiny. "Whatever the origins of the Yoruba Wars," he says, "their continuation in the second half of the nineteenth century was very largely the product of a crisis of adaptation which faced African producers as a result of the decline of the Atlantic slave trade... The crisis of adaptation had no precedents." He suggests four aspects of this "crisis of adaptation". (a) Yoruba rulers "who had risen to power on the profits of the Atlantic slave trade found that they were driven to become specialized producers in a field where there was now a high degree of atomistic competition... Dependent as they were on earnings from foreign trade for a significant part of their total incomes, they viewed their new position with considerable misgivings." (b) They tried "to maintain the level of their previous incomes, and hence their current political power, by taxing the new wealth of the numerous small producers. This they did mainly by imposing taxes on trade." (c) They therefore resented the British presence in Lagos and particularly the anti-slave trade blockade. (d) The military leaders in particular "attempted to bolster their declining fortunes" by plundering. "The warriors had been forced to embrace legitimate commerce, but because the new trade was less profitable than the old they sought at the same time to carry on, anachronistically, as freebooters in the modern world of international capitalism." Unfortunately, Dr Hopkins gives precious little evidence to support these theories, and he shows very little knowledge of Yoruba history or society, and

Hopkins on Economic Imperialism in West Africa

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

R. A. Austen

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Hopkins on Economic Imperialism in West Africa