Smallholders and Machines in the West African Palm Oil Industry, 1850–1950
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11203170 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jonathan E Robins (0000-0002-0486-0353, Chemical Industry Press, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 69-103 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Economic History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0145-2258 • E-ISSN: 2163-9108 |
| Publisher | University of Wisconsin Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.3368/aeh.46.1.69 |
| OpenAlex | W4409548781 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
This article uses colonial-era Ghana as a case study in the challenges of mechanization in West Africa’s oil palm industry during the 19th and 20th centuries. While European industrialists pursued plantation-mill complexes in places like Congo and Southeast Asia, African entrepreneurs and government officials in British colonies focused on developing machines suitable for the small-scale producers who had built up the industry over the course of the nineteenth century. As inventors and officials discovered, however, machinery was unable to address the full range of economic, social, and natural challenges posed by oil palm trees. While some colonial observers alleged that racial characteristics or cultural conservatism were to blame for the failure of machines, the economic logic that underlay farmers’ decisions was straightforward. Machines were too expensive and insufficiently productive, given prevailing prices for palm oil. Frustrated colonial governments tried to bridge the gap between larger mills and smallholder machines in the 1920s and 1930s, but with no success. By the time local factors shifted in favor of smallholder machines, colonial and national governments had moved on to large mills with accompanying plantations, leaving small-scale producers behind
Agricultural economics · Agroforestry · Business · Economics · Geography · Palm · Palm oil · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Environmental Science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
Chiefs and the Making of Industrial Policy in Nigeria
Commerce, Credit, and Mobility in Late Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast
Owners, slaves and the struggle for labour in the commercial transition at Lagos
Elaeis guineensis Jacq. (oil palm) fluctuations in central Africa during the late Holocene
The slave trade and commercial agriculture in an African context
The plantation paradigm
Imbibing the Lesson of Defiance”
The Development of Motor Transport in the Gold Coast, 1900–39
The Invisible Farmer? Women, Gender, and Colonial Agricultural Policy in the Igbo Region of Nigeria, c. 1913-1954
The United Kingdom and the political economy of the global oils and fats business during the 1930s
The Abolition of the Overseas Slave Trade
The Fiscal Role of the Marketing Boards in Nigerian Economic Development, 1947-61
Gender and Innovation
Government Policy and the Nigerian Palm Oil Export Industry, 1939–49
Government and the Decline of the Nigerian Oil-Palm Export Industry, 1919–1939
The Politics of Commercial Transition
Economical Technology against Technical Efficiency in the Oil Palm Industry of West Africa
Palm Oil Production on the Gold Coast in the Aftermath of the Slave Trade
Pawns, Porters, and Petty Traders
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |