Abstract
This chapter describes processes that created excess benefits to the British during the era of British colonialism in West Africa. The methodological challenge is to measure the transfers of income and wealth taken wrongfully. First, I present a brief analysis of European penetration of West Africa from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Then, I address modern economic development, and a case study of the palm oil trade in Nigeria from 1830 to 1914. I argue that four unfair enrichments went to the British at the expense of the Nigerians in the nineteenth century, and that another four unfair enrichments occurred in the twentieth century. Finally, I quantify the extent of this unfair wealth transfer.
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Notes
- 1.
Joseph E. lnikori, Frederick Douglas Institute, University of Rochester, “The European Slave Trade to Africa, the Rise of the Capitalist Economy, and the Relative Position of African Economies: An Examination of the Scientific Basis of Africa’s Demand for Reparations,” May 1991, Scientific Paper Commissioned by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, refers to a UNESCO Conference in Haiti in 1978 on the European slave trade as the cause of economic backwardness of Black Africa (see article in this volume).
- 2.
Kelfala M Kallon, “Does Africa Have a Case for Restitution from the West for the Atlantic Slave Trade?” in this volume. Yes, a good case is made here. 1n 1991, in Nigeria at the OAU Heads of State, meeting, there was a call for reparations for the slave trade and colonialism and that it should be negotiated through the United Nations.
- 3.
David Eltis, “Economic Growth and the Ending of the Slave Trade,” New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, Appendix E: Costs and Profits in the Illegal Slave Trade, also in this volume. In 1860 in Lagos, Nigeria, illegal slave trade still existed, long after it was abolished by Britain. The slave trade survived the longest on the Bight of Benin (Nigeria) as slaves were still being send to Cuba, and on American ships in the 1960s.
- 4.
Barbara Solow writes in this volume that first we have to acknowledge the debt, then measure it, and finally allocate the debt as a way to acknowledge a wrong, “Unfair Wealth-Transfer Effects of the Palm Oil Trade in Nigeria 1868–1959: Illustrative Partial Estimates,” in this volume.
- 5.
Augustin Kwasi Fosu, Ph.D. author of “Africa-West Colonial Relationship, Africa's Trade Structure and Terms of Trade,” in this volume, writes that the colonial legacy of the continent, the partition of Africa by Western European powers, left much of Africa politically fragile. Africa still exports raw materials and imports manufactures.
- 6.
Stephanie Y. Wilson, Presidential Address, National Economic Association, Atlanta, 1989, “Development, Restitution, and the Year 2000,” also in this volume. This is a sensitive description of problems in Africa today. She writes of Nigeria and Ghana being reclassified by the World Bank as low-income develo** countries, whereas in the past, they were middle-income develo** countries. Doesn't sound like development to me.
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Headlee, S. (2023). Unfair Wealth-Transfer Effects of the Palm Oil Trade in Nigeria 1868–1959: Illustrative Partial Estimates. In: America, R.F. (eds) Accounting for Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32804-6_6
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