1 - Introduction

Summary

… the brave army of heretics … who, following their intuitions, have preferred to see the truth obscurely and imperfectly rather than to maintain error, reached indeed with clearness and consistency and by easy logic but on hypotheses inappropriate to the facts.

J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936:371)

Scope and history of the work

The topic of this book is the rise of commercial farming in West Africa. Specifically, I ask what the various forms of agricultural commodity production have been and how the social life and economic structure of the region's communities have been affected by these developments. Such questions are analogous to asking, “What has been the effect of the Industrial Revolution on Western Europe?” except that much less is known about West Africa, many of the forces shaping its history originate from elsewhere, and there is far more variation in indigenous culture there.

What can one say about sixteen countries, four colonial traditions, and hundreds of ethnic groups? To attempt a summary would appear to be an act of gross hubris. Yet the unity of West Africa's experience of the modern world is real enough, and it is probable that, unless a synthesis of its fragmented polities is achieved fairly soon, no internal solution to the region's massive development problems will be forthcoming.