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Fecha: 18 de diciembre de 2024 13:00

Seminario de Investigación: Why extractive institutions? The choice between free and forced labor in colonial French Africa

 

Por Federico Tadei. Assistant Professor (Lector), University of Barcelona

INARBE organiza este seminario que se celebrará el día 18 de diciembre en la sala de conferencias del edificio Jerónimo de Ayanz a las 13:00h.

ABSTRACT:

Colonial rule in Africa is frequently associated with the imposition of extractive institutions, yet the decision to implement such systems was not always straightforward. To boost African agricultural production, the French colonizers employed coercive measures such as forced labor and compulsory production quotas only in certain instances, while in many other cases they relied instead on free-market incentives. In this paper, by employing a new dataset of labor institutions used in the production of 9 major commodities exported from 13 French colonies in 1900-1960, I explore the colonial governments’ incentives to choose between forced or free production. Specifically, I evaluate whether this choice was affected more by the properties of the exported commodities (world prices, economies of scale), by the characteristics of the colonies (local population density, distance to the coast, and other geographical features), or by external political and economic events of the time (pressures from the International Labor Organization, the two World Wars, or the Great Depression). The evidence suggests that there is only a relatively weak correlation between colony- or period- characteristics and institutions, whereas commodity characteristics are a much stronger determinant. Overall, the findings highlight that profitable and European-controlled commodities were more likely to involve forced labor, shedding light on the economic motivations behind labor practices and enhancing our understanding of colonial institutional choices.

PONENTE:

Federico Tadei. Assistant Professor (Lector), University of Barcelona, Department of Economic History. His main specialization is African Economic History. The unifying theme of his scientific career has been the analysis of the long-term causes of African (under)development. Specifically, he has focused on the study of the features and consequences of colonial rule, with a particular emphasis on trade and inequality. As an economic historian, his approach combines economic theory, data collected from primary sources, and econometric analysis.