Question

Before colonialism, capitalism as an economic system had not developed or expanded among African societies. Discuss the mechanisms and strategies that were used by Europeans to graft capitalism in African economies.

Answer 1

Answer:

Capitalism in pre-colonial Africa: a review

MORTEN JERVEN, Norwegian University of Life Sciences1

To what extent did capitalism come into being in Africa before 1850? If by capitalism we

mean the production of goods for exchange by capitalists who combine their own capital

and land with labor bought from free workers without land, then the accumulative

historical evidence tells us that only to a limited extent had capitalism emerged before

1850, and it was most certainly not the dominant system of production in Africa (Iliffe

1983). This does not mean that there was no production for the market. Nor does it imply

that there was no wage labor, or that exchanges of capital did not take place. Finally it does

not mean that there was no economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa before 1850. As will be

analyzed here, markets did exist, there were some wage labor and there were means of

exchange that facilitated some economic growth, though growth mostly occurred on the

extensive margin.

2

This chapter examines the long ‘pre-colonial’ African economic history up to 1850 (Reid

2011). This encompasses the time both before and after the rise and fall of the Atlantic

slave trade (and the trans-Saharan and Indian ocean slave trades). The term ‘legitimate

commerce’ denotes the exchange of goods other than slaves, and is usually used to denote

Explanation: