THE RUDIMENTARY ECONOMIES OF PRE-COLONIAL AFRICA AND PRE-INDUSTRIAL FRANCE MAKE THE EFFECTS OF GROWTH STAND OUT
Mid-15th-century Paris and mid-19th century Timbuktu were the main hubs north of the Alps or in West Africa, but were backwaters compared to the towns of Italy, 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 gradually-centralizing royal power contained it.
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Charles VI Greets Louis II of Anjou Near the Saint-Michel Gate, "Chronicle of Jean Froissart," end 14th century
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• In 1850 West African production was expanding, and states able to profit from emerged in the most commercial regions (west of Lake Chad and along the Senegal and Niger Rivers).
"Arrival at Timbuktu," Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa by Henry Barth, 1855 / zoom (color added)
Timbuktu: soldiers accompany the caravan because authority is weak and routes unsafe.
• But upheavals brewed:
- In western Europe, the geographic discoveries of the end of the 15th century would bring unprecedented growth and social upheaval.
- In West Africa growth was relatively slow because climate belts discouraged the spread of agricultural improvements* and because the Atlantic slave trade buttressed archaic elites. But its end (from about 1850) would let independent producers sweep them away and create dynamic economies based on intensive slave labor.
*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 connect political change and economic evolution.
These pages show how
African and French societies
reacted to that transformation.
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