The rubber trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the nineteenth century
African innovation and market responsiveness
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8977495 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Raymond E Dumett (Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author), Raymond Dumett |
| Year | 1971 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 79-101 |
| Publication date | 1971-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853700000086 |
| OpenAlex | W2111109873 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 58 |
| References cited | 8 |
The export trade in wild rubber occupies an important place in the nineteenth-century economic history of the Gold Coast and Asante, and the impetus which it gave to the future economic development of the country was greater than is commonly recognized. The timely development of this new product by African entrepreneurs and up-country producers in the 1880s enabled the colony to diversify its export bill at a time when flagging prices for palm products and dwindling supplies of ivory, monkey skins, and surface gold threatened economic stagnation. Between 1884 and 1898 Gold Coast rubber exports registered a twenty-five fold increase in volume, thereby placing the country among the top five rubber producers of the world. An analysis of the Gold Coast rubber trade contributes to the demolition of certain myths concerning the economically passive role of West Africans in the development of their own hinterlands. European agencies—whether mercantile or governmental—contributed only indirectly to the development of the local rubber trade. No doubt the general protection and opportunity for exercise of individual initiative which the British colonial government provided enabled the Gold Coast to escape the excesses of forced labour and expropriation which marred European concessionaire rubber operations in other parts of Africa. But it was chiefly the myriads of African merchants, middlemen and producers who supplied the driving force of the local trade during the nineteenth century. The rubber trade accelerated the pace of economic change in Asante and other interior states where the pull exerted by the sea-borne export sector previously had been minimal. It is clear that the number of people involved in trading generally—whether as middlemen or producers—increased greatly as a result of the lucrative returns to be gained from rubber tapping. With rubber trade expansion came a growing demand by producers for a wider range of European merchandise imports, plus the acceptance of a uniform metallic currency which facilitated market transactions throughout the interior. Finally, the profits saved from rubber tapping became an important source for indigenous capital investment in cocoa-farming, particularly in Asante
Archaeology · Colonialism · Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Geography · Gold coast · International trade · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
Angola and Mozambique, 1870–1905
East Africa 1870–1905
French Congo and Gabon 1886–1905
Africa on the Eve of Partition
Western Africa, 1870–1886
The Eguafo Polity
Western Africa, 1886–1905
North Africa
Madagascar and France, 1870–1905
Commerce, Credit, and Mobility in Late Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast
The European Partition of Africa
The European Scramble and Conquest in African History
King Leopold's Congo, 1886–1908
Explaining and Evaluating the Cash Crop Revolution in the “Peasant” Colonies of Tropical Africa, ca. 1890–ca.1930
Plant Transfers in Historical Perspective
Vent for surplus reconsidered with Ghanaian evidence
Of Stocks and Barter
Poverty and Development as Themes in British Films on the Gold Coast, 1927–57
The Cambridge History of Africa
Filiation, Economic Crisis, and the Status of Women in Rural Ghana
Trade costs and the integration of British West Africa in the global economy, c . 1840–1940
Spatio-temporal distribution and consumption of local earthenwares from 19th-20th century Amedeka, Southeastern Ghana
Transferências de plantas em uma perspectiva histórica
World Deforestation in the Twentieth Century
Rethinking African Economic History
Colonial Liquor Regulation, Akpeteshie, and Smuggling along the Pra River, Shama Hinterland, Southern Ghana
Sovereign states and their prey
Perspectives on Fifty Years of Ghanaian Historiography
Spirits of migration’ meet the ‘migration of spirits’ among the Akan Diaspora in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A West African ‘Fashoda’
Gold coasters overseas, 1880–1919
Origins of the Gold Coast Cocoa Industry
Colonial rule and political culture in modern Ashanti
Long-term trends in income inequality
Fathering, mothering and making sense ofntamoba
Rubber will not keep in this country”
No Elders Were Present’
Economic Imperialism
Order and Conflict in the Asante Empire
Vent for surplus or productivity breakthrough? The G hanaian cocoa take‐off, c. 1890–1936
Bioprospecting and Resistance
Labour and Land in Ghana, 1874–1939
Danish settlements on the gold coast in the nineteenth century
The Youngmen and the Porcupine
The end of red rubber
Akan stool succession under colonial rule—continuity or change
Pan-Africanism, Rational and Irrational
John Sarbah, the elder, and African mercantile entrepreneurship in the Gold Coast in the late nineteenth Century
Global trading companies in the commodity chain of rubber between 1890 and the 1920s
African Merchants of the Gold Coast, 1860-1905-Dynamics of Indigenous Entrepreneurship
Le médecin qui voulut être roi
Trade Networks and Consumer Practices in Amedeka, Ghana
The Sefwi Wiawso Riot of 1935
Bulk Exports, Trade Tiers, Regulation, and Development
Children For Death
Rank and class among the Asante and Fante in the nineteenth century
Accumulation
Formation and stratification of the peasantry in colonial Ghana
West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century
The Economic Revolution in British West Africa
Structural Changes in the Economy of Ghana 1891–1911
The Development of Kwahu Business Enterprise in Ghana Since 1874—An Essay in Recent Oral Tradition
Ashanti Law and Constitution
The Rise of the British Rubber Industry during the Nineteenth Century
The Development of British Malaya, 1896-1909
| Unique citing works | 58 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,09 |
| Citation span | 1973 - 2025 (53) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 58 |