Guest post: Where are the gaps in African economic history?

Despite a thriving discipline, let's not ignore potential blind spots

It’s been a good millennium for African economic history so far. At the turn of the century, the field had languished for some two decades, left behind by historical research more interested in culture and not yet discovered by social scientists focusing on the present day. The last quarter century has seen both of these factors change.

As Tony Hopkins and others have already documented, the first turning point was arguably a shift in economics towards questions about the deep roots of economic divergence, and particularly the role of institutions. This prompted a renewed interest in how historical developments have shaped the present. A second turning point following the financial crisis in 2007-8 was that historians once again began to think about economic structures in a detailed way. The applications of two broader intellectual currents to African economic history were facilitated by the collection of a wide variety of new data on African trade, public finance, demographic trends, and a whole range of other topics.

This has resulted in a dramatic expansion in the volume and variety of research on Africa's economic past, published in journals and books coming from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. One indicator of this expansion is the growth of the African Economic History Network’s annual meeting. From 2005-10 this meeting was an informal gathering at the LSE convened by Gareth Austin, with between 7 and 11 papers. Since then, the number of papers presented each year has risen to more than 90 (see the figure below based on this source).

But what’s next? We used an annual gathering of African economic historians from Cambridge and the LSE at the end of May 2023 to reflect on how the field has developed, and what we still have left to do. The structure of academic research leads to inevitable path dependence – while the aim of each publication is to make a new contribution, that contribution is often defined by the topics, methods and sources that have come before. Supervisors naturally direct students towards areas with which they are familiar. As a result, otherwise valuable topics and approaches can be left behind.

One gap identified in the discussion is chronological. Much of the recent outpouring of research focuses on the period of colonial rule. There are two valid reasons for this. First, colonial bureaucracies were prodigious producers of data, the digitisation of which has allowed for more systematic discussions of Africa’s long-run economic performance and how this compares to that of other regions. Second, there is great interest among academics and the general public in the legacies of colonial rule.

However, it remains the case that for most of Africa, the colonial period was relatively brief – 60-80 years, or sometimes even less. While no doubt an important period in Africa’s economic development, it is questionable whether it warrants such a disproportionate amount of scholarship. The focus on colonialism can also lead to a tendency to view everything in terms of colonialism, perhaps misleadingly attributing broader economic and social trends to colonial policies.

For example, except for the Atlantic Slave Trade, the long sweep of African history prior to colonial conquest has not received as much attention from economic historians today. This was not true of the first generation of African historians, who deliberately set out to emphasise that the colonial period was only a ‘moment’ compared to this long history. The absence of written documentation for many African societies before the nineteenth century can make systematic study of this longer history a challenge. However, the group discussed how interdisciplinary cooperation and new technologies might help change this. Scholars in other disciplines have used material, linguistic, genetic, or environmental evidence to reach farther back in time than written evidence allows us to go. New textual analysis techniques allow us to systematise and analyse fragmentary written records much more than before.

Lack of documentation can’t explain the other chronological gap, namely the process of decolonisation – the period since the transition to independence. Both are the subject of significant literature written by historians, political scientists, and economists. However, as yet, only a few works of economic history attempt to follow trends set in the colonial period through the post-independence period. This is slowly changing with the creation of long-run datasets covering the whole of the twentieth century. Equally important, however, is understanding the economic history of the process of decolonisation and the ways it shaped institutions and government policies in the decades since.

Gaps are not only chronological but also geographical. Language barriers and accessibility of government archives have meant that former British and, to a lesser extent, French colonies have been the subject of much more scrutiny than the colonies of smaller empires or the states that remained independent. (One recent effort to address this last gap is here.) The use of government archives has crowded out other possible sources, such as business or missionary archives, or oral histories, which might offer a different perspective but vary in terms of how readily accessible they are to researchers. Access to business archives is particularly uneven, and several notable closures – such as that of the Firestone archive in Akron, Ohio – have made researching certain topics much more difficult. Digitisation can, to some degree, help resolve accessibility problems, but digitisation is always selective, and scholars need to know how decisions are made about what to digitise or not.

The biggest gap in the study of African economic history, however, remains the fact that the bulk of this research has been produced by scholars from Europe or North America. With a few notable exceptions – such as LEAP at Stellenbosch University or the former Department of Economic History at the University of Zimbabwe – scholarship by Africans or produced by scholars in African universities has not gained much international traction. Various institutional barriers have contributed to this, ranging from the incentives facing academics at African universities to the limited funding available for African students who want to pursue graduate work abroad.

Addressing this last gap must be the top priority in developing the field more broadly. As Gareth Austin, Johan Fourie (see this previous post) and others have noted, how to do this is a difficult question. One issue is the need to be creative in attracting good students to the field, and bridging gaps with other disciplines like political science or management which may have broader reach in African universities. Another is strengthening public engagement. African economic history (and those who study it) can and should play a key role in public policy on the continent in much the same way as Eric Williams did as Prime Minister of Trinidad or Ben Bernanke and Andrew Bailey have as leaders of central banks in the USA and the UK.

The discussion closed on an optimistic note. African economic history is thriving. Our May meeting saw exciting new presentations by PhD students, postdocs, and assistant professors on a wide range of topics that already go some way towards filling some of the abovementioned gaps. In terms of backgrounds, presenters came from history, economics, political science, and law, to name just a few disciplines for which African economic history is becoming increasingly relevant. And the field continues to grow in South Africa. LEAP has now become a formal centre of Stellenbosch University, allowing it to attract its own funding. The University of the Western Cape in South Africa has recently introduced a new module in economic history. And in October, the African Economic History meetings will be held at the University of Pretoria, with several scholars in their Economics and History departments creating a new hub for economic history research. Sign up for the African Economic History Network newsletter to find out how to get involved.