THE RUDIMENTARY ECONOMIES
OF PRE-COLONIAL AFRICA AND PRE-INDUSTRIAL FRANCE
MAKE THE IMPACT OF GROWTH EASY TO DISCERN
Paris and Timbuktu were the main centers
north of the Alps or in West Africa,
but they were isolated
in comparison with the Italian towns
and insignificant next to those
of the Middle East, India and China
• By 1450 France
had recovered from the plague
and the ravages of the Hundred Years' War.
Economic growth was gradual
and gently-centralizing power contained it
 |
Charles VI greets Louis II of Anjou near the Saint Michel gate, Chronicle of Jean Froissart, about 1390
Paris: the north-south route looks like a country path.
|
• By 1850
sub-Saharan trade and production were expanding
and states able to keep them in check
had emerged in the most commercial regions
(in Northern Nigeria and west of Lake Chad)
 |
"Arrival at Timbuktu," Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa by Henry Barth, 1855 (color / Internet)
|
Timbuktu: soldiers precede the caravane because authority is weak and routes unsafe.
• But upheavals were on the way
° In western Europe,
the geographic discoveries of the end of the 15th century
would bring unprecedented growth and social cataclysm.
° In West Africa,
growth had been relatively slow because climate belts
discouraged the spread of agricultural improvements,
but after 1850 the end of the Atlantic slave trade
would turn breezes of change into hurricanes.
-- Climate belts:
A popular history of the world, from the stone age to the new millenium,
by Chris Harmon, "The African civilizations," 1999.
A rare history to see political change as the result of economic evolution.
.
End of this beginning.
* * *
