Last week 23 scholars, 17 of them visiting, gathered at the Graduate Institute’s Villa Barton for a two-day African Economic History Workshop organised by Professor Gareth Austin who joined the faculty at the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year.
The workshop was based on 18 papers by presenters who included senior economic historians from around the world such as Akinobu Kuroda from Tokyo and Leandro Prados de la Escosura from Madrid as well as younger professors and post-docs. The practical purpose of the discussions was to help each author improve her or his paper for subsequent submission for publication in various journals and books. Chosen competitively, and variously drawing on quantitative and qualitative sources, the papers tackled such themes as multiple currencies in precolonial Africa, land tenure and agricultural development, colonial investments in education and transport, and resources and property rights. A paper by Morten Jerven (Simon Fraser University, Canada) considered the political economy of statistical data on agricultural fertilizers today, arguing that African agricultural “‘data’ are themselves a product” of the policies whose outcome they are supposed to measure.
Three papers were given by members of the Institute. Fenneke Reysoo, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, presented a paper on “Islamic Economic Actors in Burkina Faso: Intriguing Pathways”, co-written with Issa Cissé, Professor of History at the University of Ouagadougou. Riad Rezzik, a teaching assistant in History and Politics at the Institute, submitted a paper entitled “Untying colonial bonds: Rhodesian default and UK investors’ protection in the 1960s”. Gareth Austin’s own contribution, “The Political Economy of the Export of Slaves from West Africa”, examined the “supply side’” of the notorious Atlantic and Saharan trades.
Professor Austin has held an annual African Economic History Workshop for the past seven years. This was the first time the event has been organised by the Graduate Institute and held in Geneva. Some of the workshop’s participants are involved in a follow-up Network in African economic history, which has just received a grant from a Swedish funding agency.
Last month Gareth Austin was re-elected as President of the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH). Also in April, he gave the keynote speech at a festschrift conference held at the University of Texas in honour of A. G. Hopkins, Professor of International History at the Graduate Institute of International Studies from 1988 to 1993. Professor Hopkins’s books include An Economic History of West Africa and (with Peter Cain), British Imperialism.
Gareth Austin is Professor of International History and Politics. His teaching and research focus on African, comparative and global economic history. He joined the faculty in 2010 from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to that, he lectured at the University of Ghana. He is the author of Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956.
More information on the African Economic History Workshop is available in the International History and Politics Section of the website.