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Vent for surplus or productivity breakthrough? The G hanaian cocoa take‐off, c. 1890–1936
Author(s) -
Austin Gareth
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0289.12043
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , cash crop , productivity , cash , economics , interpretation (philosophy) , production (economics) , resource (disambiguation) , agriculture , natural resource economics , market economy , microeconomics , economic growth , finance , geography , computer network , archaeology , computer science , programming language
Through a case study of cocoa‐farming in G hana, this article takes up the long‐running but recently neglected debate about the ‘cash crop revolution’ in tropical A frica during the early colonial period. It focuses on the supply side, to test the much criticized but never superseded ‘vent‐for‐surplus’ interpretation of the export expansion as a substitution of labour for leisure. The article argues that while the model captured certain features of the case, such as the application of labour to underused land, its defining claim about labour is without empirical foundation. Rather, the evidence points to a reallocation of resources from existing market activities towards the adoption of an exotic crop, entailing a shift towards a new, qualitatively different and more profitable kind of production function. This innovation is best understood in the context of the long‐term search of A frican producers for ways of realizing the economic potential of their resource of relatively abundant land, while ameliorating the constraints which the environment put upon its use.