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| Title: | The impact of European settlement within French West Africa: did pre-colonial prosperous areas fall behind? |
| Author: | Huillery, Elise |
| Year: | 2011 |
| Periodical: | Journal of African Economies (ISSN 0963-8024) |
| Volume: | 20 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 263-311 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | West Africa French-speaking Africa French West Africa |
| Subjects: | colonization economic development colonists population distribution anticolonialism |
| External link: | https://jae.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/2/263.full.pdf |
| Abstract: | Did colonization change the distribution of prosperity within French-speaking West Africa? Using a new database on both precolonial and colonial contexts, this paper gives evidence that Europeans tended to settle in more prosperous precolonial areas and that the European settlement had a strong positive impact on current outcomes, even in an extractive colonial context, resulting in a positive relationship between pre- and postcolonial performances. The author argues that the African hostility towards colonial power to colonization provides a random variation in European settlement since it damaged the profitability of colonial activities and dissuaded Europeans from settling, but does not have a direct effect on current outcomes. Rich and hostile areas received less European settlers than they would have received had they not been so hostile, resulting in lower current performances partly due to lower colonial investments. Despite the absence of a 'reversal of fortune' within former French West Africa, some of the most prosperous precolonial areas lost their advantage because of their hostility: other areas caught up and became the new leaders in the region. App., bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
