A new interpretation of West Africa in the global economy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K20907
• Project/Area Number (Other): 18H05710 (2018)
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund (2019); Single-year Grants (2018)
• Review Section: 0107:Economics, business administration, and related fields
• Research Institution: Waseda University (2019); Osaka Sangyo University (2018)
• Principal Investigator: Kobayashi Kazuo 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 准教授 (00823189)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-08-24 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: グローバル・ヒストリー / アフリカ経済史 / 西アフリカ / インド綿布 / 大西洋奴隷貿易 / 近代世界経済 / 熱帯 / 西アフリカと南アジアの経済関係

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Dependency theorists proposed the view that West Africa was a 'passive victim' of the global economy through the Atlantic slave trade and the subsequent cash-crop trade during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast, this research project illustrates that consumers in West Africa - in particular, their demand for Indian cotton textiles - were active actors who influenced the global economy during that period. As the major output, I published a monograph(Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa: African Agency, Consumer Demand and the Making of the Global Economy, 1750-1850) from Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.

Free Research Field

経済史

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究では、18-19世紀の西アフリカにおけるインド綿布の需要に代表される、サハラ以南アフリカ（Africa South of the Sahara）と南アジア（South Asia）の経済関係史（south-south economic history）を世界経済史解釈の新機軸として打ち出した。それによって、グローバルな枠組みのなかで大西洋奴隷貿易や換金作物貿易、西ヨーロッパの工業化、近代世界経済の興隆過程などの理解に資する視点を得ることができる。