AN ECONOMIC FOCUS BRINGS A DIFFERENT STORY

BLOOK 1 SHOWED HOW NOTICING HOW WHAT IS USUALLY OMITTED CHANGES ONE'S VIEW OF PARIS. 

BLOOK 2 SHOWS HOW SETTING BELIEFS, STRUGGLES AND EVENTS IN THEIR ECONOMIC CONTEXTS TRANSFORMS THEIR MEANING 

It compares how pre-industrial France and pre-colonial Africa  changed in response to profit-seeking economies.  

Louis XIV in T.Cahu, Le Roy Soleil, 1931; the Sheik of Bornu in Clapperton's narrative, 1824

Railings highlight and isolate kings in 17th-century France and 19th-century Northern Nigeria.

# # #

The pages on Africa summarize research done in 1972-73 for a doctorate from New York's Columbia University, "Growth and Violence in the Precolonial Sudanic Belt," 1975. It included consulting the archives of Paris, Abidjan, Dakar, Bamako, Wagadugu and Accra, interviews in those towns and in Segu (Mali) and three months of field work in Djimini (Ivory Coast).  

It was published as Croissance économique et violence dans la zone soudanienne in "Guerres de lignages et guerres d'état en Afrique,"ed. J. Bazin et E. Terray, Paris, Éditions des Archives, 1982. 

# # #

Harald Wolff

The economy and its changes are the base, 

then come facts of different levels of importance, 

which stories illustrate. 

Facts divorced from their tangible contexts 

can illuminate anyway, 

but by suppressing the real issues often mislead.

*     *    *
Next:

Why Africa?