Living standards on the pre-colonial Gold Coast

Rönnbäck, Klas,1974Gothenburg University,Göteborgs universitet,Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen,Department of Economic History (author)

Much recent research in economic history has been devoted to the issue of comparing living standards more or less globally for the period prior to the industrial revolution. In these comparisons, the African continent has largely been left out, perhaps primarily due to a lack of quantitative data from the pre-colonial era. In this paper, I attempt to estimate quantitatively the living standards for a small share of the population in West Africa in pre-colonial times, namely people working at the British Royal African Company forts during the 18th century. The sample includes labourers of African origin, both skilled and unskilled. The people working for the RAC are by no means statistically representative of the population in the region in general. Since the sample includes free labourers, who presumably could have chosen not to work for the RAC, it might however enlighten us about the opportunities that working for the RAC represented. This could potentially be used to study the development of living standards in West Africa during the 18th century, as well as provide a benchmark of living standards for further studies on the economic development in later periods.

In:World Economic History Congress, Stellenbosch, july 2012
In:The global and long-term development of real wages: methods, problems and possibilities, workshop, Amsterdam, november 2012

About the subject

SOCIAL SCIENCES: SOCIAL SCIENCES; and Economics and Bu ...; and Economic History

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