The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship between labour and land in African value systems.
Great piece. I’ve found the wealth in people (or in economic terms, high land to labour ratio) an interesting idea - seems quite a powerful lens for explaining certain institutional outcomes in (parts of) Africa - but I very much take your point that there is lots of examples that point against a simple binary (and many parts of Europe and Asia were also fairly land abundant until recently). Do you think there is any power in the relative price idea, that agricultural land in much of Africa was comparatively ‘cheap’ relative to labour, when compared to Eurasia?
It depends greatly on which agricultural land and during which period. There were places in Africa that were densely populated for a long time and very intensely cultivated; think of the Nile Valley, Ethiopian Highlands, Rwandan Highlands, the West African coast from Ghana to Cameroon, and the inland delta of Mali.
Whether this land was comparatively "cheap" requires that we assume a fair international market for land, discounting its social and political utility, which were also factored into its value.
The value of land wasn't solely determined by its agricultural use, or population density for that matter. One of Thornton's arguments (which I don't fully agree with here) was that the West African coast was densely populated, but didn't develop elaborate systems of landholding. A counter-example is Sudan, where population density is low (especially in Darfur), and land is presumably relatively abundant, yet most of its largest kingdoms developed complex systems of landholding and land markets.
I think that the West African coast did have landholding systems that were disregarded because direct evidence (through documentation) isn't available, but the existence of these systems can be inferred from studying similar non-literate societies where they have been found (like in Asante and Zambia's Lozi kingdom)
Theoretically speaking, a person looking to acquire land in the early 19th century, for example, may find it "cheaper" to obtain landholding rights along the West African coast, eg in Calabar, Nigeria, than in Sudan, despite the higher population density and greater agricultural value of land in the former.
Considering that the latter involved obtaining a charter/grant from the Sultan or belonging to an established religious and social family in the kingdom (exchanges were very interpersonal), while the former required less prohibitive political and economic exchanges like personal wealth, intermarriage, religious acculturation, etc (stories of individual men of low standing who accumulated lots of wealth are more abundant in Calabar than in Sudan).
In my opinion, reducing the value of land to agricultural output relative to labour is mostly a reflection of our modern context where land is fully commodified (de-emphasizing all other forms of utility besides its economic value), and our modern legal systems, which are relatively uniform, and can facilitate such comparisons across multiple societies.
Any comparative analysis we attempt to make is undermined by the sheer complexity of these varying historical contexts.
love this page.you are an awesome writter and I've learned a lot because of your work.For some reason african history appears to me to suffer more than anyother world region from distortions by specious claims and popular but ultimately very stupid tropes.
take ''States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control ''by Jeffrey Herbst ,the argument has so many flaws(like j diamonds book) that i struggle to believe why even today it is quoted(even in books by african authors) as a serious work in the analysis of premodern african states.would be a dream to read a sharp analysis of yours about it btw.
However,do you share my appreciation of african history beign particularly distorted or misreppresented? If so, would you agree with me that the quantity as well as the quality of knowledge production and versatility its communication by africans and afro-descendents must increase?or do you have other reasons in mind?
There are indeed a lot of misrepresentations in African history, even from well-meaning scholars, because the discipline has deep-rooted colonial foundations.
I think a lot of the research being done in the field is an attempt to overturn these colonial misconceptions, but scholars stop short of repudiating the problematic theoretical basis of modern African historiography itself. That's why we find ourselves still debating these seemingly basic concepts like whether Africans valued land or whether they were agents of their own history.
The participation by Africans and the diaspora in the dissemination of their own history would certainly help accelerate the decolonisation process, because the field is still dominated by Western specialists and institutions, some of whom are preoccupied with gate-keeping knowledge generated by Africans about their own societies.
For example, I learned that these Angolan archives mentioned in the essay were not even accessible to the very people who wrote and preserved them! They were simply locked in a Western museum as some sort of ethnographic artifact, yet they contained centuries of precious historical data.
Great piece. I’ve found the wealth in people (or in economic terms, high land to labour ratio) an interesting idea - seems quite a powerful lens for explaining certain institutional outcomes in (parts of) Africa - but I very much take your point that there is lots of examples that point against a simple binary (and many parts of Europe and Asia were also fairly land abundant until recently). Do you think there is any power in the relative price idea, that agricultural land in much of Africa was comparatively ‘cheap’ relative to labour, when compared to Eurasia?
It depends greatly on which agricultural land and during which period. There were places in Africa that were densely populated for a long time and very intensely cultivated; think of the Nile Valley, Ethiopian Highlands, Rwandan Highlands, the West African coast from Ghana to Cameroon, and the inland delta of Mali.
Whether this land was comparatively "cheap" requires that we assume a fair international market for land, discounting its social and political utility, which were also factored into its value.
The value of land wasn't solely determined by its agricultural use, or population density for that matter. One of Thornton's arguments (which I don't fully agree with here) was that the West African coast was densely populated, but didn't develop elaborate systems of landholding. A counter-example is Sudan, where population density is low (especially in Darfur), and land is presumably relatively abundant, yet most of its largest kingdoms developed complex systems of landholding and land markets.
I think that the West African coast did have landholding systems that were disregarded because direct evidence (through documentation) isn't available, but the existence of these systems can be inferred from studying similar non-literate societies where they have been found (like in Asante and Zambia's Lozi kingdom)
Theoretically speaking, a person looking to acquire land in the early 19th century, for example, may find it "cheaper" to obtain landholding rights along the West African coast, eg in Calabar, Nigeria, than in Sudan, despite the higher population density and greater agricultural value of land in the former.
Considering that the latter involved obtaining a charter/grant from the Sultan or belonging to an established religious and social family in the kingdom (exchanges were very interpersonal), while the former required less prohibitive political and economic exchanges like personal wealth, intermarriage, religious acculturation, etc (stories of individual men of low standing who accumulated lots of wealth are more abundant in Calabar than in Sudan).
In my opinion, reducing the value of land to agricultural output relative to labour is mostly a reflection of our modern context where land is fully commodified (de-emphasizing all other forms of utility besides its economic value), and our modern legal systems, which are relatively uniform, and can facilitate such comparisons across multiple societies.
Any comparative analysis we attempt to make is undermined by the sheer complexity of these varying historical contexts.
love this page.you are an awesome writter and I've learned a lot because of your work.For some reason african history appears to me to suffer more than anyother world region from distortions by specious claims and popular but ultimately very stupid tropes.
take ''States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control ''by Jeffrey Herbst ,the argument has so many flaws(like j diamonds book) that i struggle to believe why even today it is quoted(even in books by african authors) as a serious work in the analysis of premodern african states.would be a dream to read a sharp analysis of yours about it btw.
However,do you share my appreciation of african history beign particularly distorted or misreppresented? If so, would you agree with me that the quantity as well as the quality of knowledge production and versatility its communication by africans and afro-descendents must increase?or do you have other reasons in mind?
I'm very grateful for your contribution.Thanks
There are indeed a lot of misrepresentations in African history, even from well-meaning scholars, because the discipline has deep-rooted colonial foundations.
I think a lot of the research being done in the field is an attempt to overturn these colonial misconceptions, but scholars stop short of repudiating the problematic theoretical basis of modern African historiography itself. That's why we find ourselves still debating these seemingly basic concepts like whether Africans valued land or whether they were agents of their own history.
The participation by Africans and the diaspora in the dissemination of their own history would certainly help accelerate the decolonisation process, because the field is still dominated by Western specialists and institutions, some of whom are preoccupied with gate-keeping knowledge generated by Africans about their own societies.
For example, I learned that these Angolan archives mentioned in the essay were not even accessible to the very people who wrote and preserved them! They were simply locked in a Western museum as some sort of ethnographic artifact, yet they contained centuries of precious historical data.