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| 2. |
- 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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| 3. |
- Galli, Stefania, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Economic Inequality in Latin America and Africa, 1650 to 1950: Can a comparison of historical trajectories help to understand underdevelopment?
- 2023
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Ingår i: Economic History of Developing Regions. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2078-0389 .- 2078-0397. ; 38:1, s. 41-64
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present article provides a comparative review of historicaleconomic inequality in the two most unequal regions of theworld, namely Latin America and Africa. This contributionexamines novel studies that provide quantitative estimates ofincome and/or wealth inequality in the two continents in termsof sources, methods, results and interpretations, focusing on theperiod 1650 to 1950. The article shows that although scholars inthe two regions have often employed similar methodologies,their results are far from conforming to a uniform pattern. Thepresent review highlights how scholars of Latin America andAfrica tend to remain geographically isolated, failing to capturethe learning opportunities stemming from the work of theircontinental counterparts in terms of both sources and methods.
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| 4. |
- 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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| 5. |
- Galli, Stefania, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Reconstructing a slave society: Building the DWI panel, 1760-1914
- 2023
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this article, we discuss the sources employed and the methodological choices that entailed assembling a novel, individual-level, large panel dataset containing an incredible wealth of data for a full population in the Caribbeans over the long run, the DWI panel. The panel contains over 1.35 million observations spanning 154 years, well over 100 variables, and its records are linked across sources along demographic and geographic lines throughout the entire period. This richness is all the more valuable in light of the limited source’s availability characteristics of the area and is hoped to lead to a renewed debate over our understanding of former slave societies, while fostering collaborations with scholars relying on similar datasets for other areas of the world.
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| 6. |
- Galli, Stefania, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Thriving in a declining economy - Elite persistence in the West Indies, 1760-1914
- 2024
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The issue of how elites as a social group come to be, how they maintain their position and how they affect the society they come to control is very much at the centre of the inequality debate. The present paper studies one of the most extreme unequal societies ever recorded, that of the sugar-based economies in the West Indies, and examines the emergence and persistence of its economic elite by focusing on the island of St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. The study spans 154 years, enabling us to study long-run elite persistence along with the effects that major economic, institutional, and social changes had on it. Our study shows that elite persistence remained high throughout this period, despite several potential ‘critical junctures’ taking place. The Crucian elite not only managed to maintain its relative standing but also to accumulate a growing share of the total wealth available on the island. Maintaining a grip on the economy did, nonetheless, coincide with a severe and rapid impoverishment in absolute terms.
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| 8. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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A colonial cash cow: the return on investments in British Malaya, 1889-1969
- 2022
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Ingår i: Cliometrica. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1863-2505 .- 1863-2513. ; 16, s. 149-173
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Historical rates of return on investments have received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Much literature has focused especially on colonies, where institutions have been argued to facilitate severe exploitation. In the present study, we examine the return on investments in an Asian colony, British Malaya, from 1889 to 1969 for a large sample of companies. Our results suggest that the return on investments in Malaya might have been among the highest in the world during the period studied. Nevertheless, this finding fits badly with theories of imperial exploitation and can only to a limited extent be explained by a higher risk premium. Instead, we argue that the main driver of the very high return on investments in Malaya was rather the substantial rise in global market prices of the output of the two main sectors of the Malayan economy, rubber and tin. The way that the process of decolonization unfolded in Malaya did, furthermore, not lead to any major nationalization of foreign-held assets, and did thereby not disrupt the return on investment in the region in the same way as decolonization did to the return on investment in some other colonies.
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| 10. |
- 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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