| 1. |
- Galli, Stefania, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Colonialism and rural inequality in Sierra Leone: an egalitarian experiment
- 2020
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Ingår i: European Review of Economic History. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1361-4916 .- 1474-0044. ; 24:3, s. 468-501
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We analyze the level of inequality in rural Sierra Leone in the early colonial period. Previous research has suggested that the colony was established under highly egalitarian ideals. We examine whether these ideals also are reflected in the real distribution of wealth in the colony. We employ a newly assembled dataset extracted from census data in the colony in 1831. The results show that rural Sierra Leone exhibited one of the most equal distributions of wealth so far estimated for any preindustrial rural society
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| 2. |
- Galli, Stefania, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Land distribution and Inequality in a Black Settler Colony: The case of Sierra Leone, 1792-1831
- 2021
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Ingår i: Economic history review. - : Wiley. - 0013-0117 .- 1468-0289. ; 74:1, s. 115-137
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Land distribution is considered to be one of the main contributors to inequality in pre-industrial societies. This article contributes to the debate on the origins of economic inequality in pre-industrial African societies by studying land inequality at a particularly early stage of African economic history. The research examines land distribution and inequality in land ownership among settlers in the Colony of Sierra Leone for three benchmark years over the first 40 years of its existence. The findings show that land inequality was low at the founding of the Colony but increased substantially over time.We suggest that this increase was enabled by a shift in the type of egalitarianism pursued by the colonial authorities, which was reflected in a change in the redistributive policy applied, which allowed later settlers to appropriate land more freely than had been previously possible.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Aednan och Bolaget: ett kolonialt perspektiv på gruvbrytning i Sápmi vid 1900-talets början : Aednan and the Company: A Colonial Perspective on Mining in Sapmi in the Early Twentieth Century
- 2020
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Ingår i: Historisk Tidskrift. - 0345-469X. ; 140:3, s. 476-497
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite a growing international interest in the colonial history of indigenous people in general, and an emerging field of Sami-related history in Sweden in particular, the impact on the field of Swedish economic history is still very limited. This is somewhat paradoxical, given that the dominating narrative on the modernization of the Swedish economy during the 19th and 20th century still rests heavily on the exploitation of natural resources located in Sápmí. In this article we pose the question: to what extent can a colonial perspective further our understanding of the exploitation of mineral deposits in the northern part of Sweden? To pursue such an analysis, we specifically address the development of the iron ore mine in Kiruna during the late 19th and early 20th century. We use a combination of sources (press, government investigations and literature) to probe into the relationships between on the one hand the Sami people and on the other hand the private and public interests that were formed in the wake of the development of a mine, which in just a few years developed into the largest mine in Sweden and the dominating stock on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We show that theoretical approaches developed in the tradition of colonial history can offer productive modes of analysis when it comes to further our understanding of the structural discrimination of the Sami people. We argue that these theoretical approaches can open up important new avenues for scholars in economic history to search for new sources or revisit old ones with new questions about the grand narrative of how the modernization of Sweden came about.
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| 5. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974
(författare)
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Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains
- 2021
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Ingår i: Slavery & Abolition. - 0144-039X. ; 42:1, s. 130-150
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article studies how the governance of a colonial value-chain impacted upon the value-added created. The article focuses on the value-chain of colonial sugar produced in the slave plantation complex in the Americas. Previous research has suggested that British planters in the Caribbean were able to reap high profits because of a protected market for sugar in Britain. In this paper, it is argued that it was mainly British refiners that were able to profit from these protectionist policies. Wholesale prices of muscovado sugar are shown to have been more or less on a par with those prevalent under free-market conditions, whereas the price of refined sugar was considerably higher in Britain than it presumably would have been in a free-market. Limited competition and active collusion between refiners seem to have increased the mark-up on the refined sugar relative to the price of muscovado in Britain. Focusing only on the profitability on certain links in value-chains associated with the slave plantation complex in the Americas (most importantly the slave trade) might detract attention from how the governance structure of the value-chains allowed profits to be reaped elsewhere in the same value-chains.
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| 6. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974
(författare)
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The Built Environment of the Precolonial West African Coast: Materials, Functions and Housing Standards
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of West African History. - 2327-1868 .- 2327-1876. ; 6:2, s. 1-31
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article studies the built environment along the West African coast as described in European historical sources from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century. Many early modern European observers believed housing standards in West Africa remained poor over this long period, and attributed this to a lack of development. The evidence presented in this article suggests that most European observers missed several key functions of traditional African architecture, as well as how the architecture in use might have been an adaptation to the socioeconomic context developing in relation to the Atlantic slave trade.
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| 7. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974
(författare)
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The business of barter on the pre-colonial Gold Coast
- 2020
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Ingår i: Economic History of Developing Regions. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2078-0389 .- 2078-0397. ; 35:2, s. 123-142
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Trade on the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century was dominated by non-monetized barter trade. In this paper, a large dataset of barter transactions are used to study the social embeddedness of the trade. The data shows that prestige goods such as alcohol to a disproportionate degree were exchanged for other prestige goods such as gold. Guns - but also cheaper types of textiles - were to a disproportionate degree exchanged for slaves in particular. The evidence thus helps to shed light on the social valuation of various imported commodities on the Gold Coast at this time.
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| 8. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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The Crumble in the Jungle: The London Financial Press and the Boom-and-Bust Cycles of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, 1895–1914
- 2021
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Ingår i: Enterprise & society. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 1467-2227 .- 1467-2235. ; 22:4, s. 970-996
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we study the role that media plays during a speculative bubble on an emerging market, and in particular the London financial press’s relation to the West African mining bubble of the early twentieth century. The focus is on the leading company in this sector at the time, Ashanti Goldfields Corporation. The London financial press lacked access to independent, reliable information on the ground, so it often failed to provide readers with relevant factual information. In some instances, the press might have even fueled the speculative cycles through the reporting it provided.
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| 9. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974
(författare)
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The Slave Trades out of Africa
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ewout Frankema, Ellen Hillbom, Felix Meier zu Selhausen (eds), The History of African Development. - : African Economic History Network.
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter describes the external slave trades out of Africa. It discusses how the slave trades developed over time, and factors that contributed to the growth of the slave trades out of Africa. It furthermore discusses the consequences that the slave trades had for socio-economic development in Africa. It finally describes the abolition of the slave trades, and what impact this had upon the African continent.
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| 10. |
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