Two Worlds of Cotton: Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, 1800-1946 - Hardcover

Roberts, Richard L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804726523 ISBN 13: 9780804726528

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

A major new approach to the study of the social and economic history of colonial French West Africa, this book traces French efforts to establish a cotton export economy in the French Soudan from the early nineteenth century through the end of World War II.

Cotton cultivation and handicraft cotton textile production had long been an important part of the indigenous regional economies of West Africa. During the nineteenth century, the French metropolitan cotton textile industry developed and expanded, and securing new sources for raw cotton became a central concern for French industrialists and the emerging technocratic leadership of the French state. Controlling the French West Africa cotton harvest thus became of paramount importance to the French colonial endeavor.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A major new approach to the study of the social and economic history of colonial French West Africa, this book traces French efforts to establish a cotton export economy in the French Soudan from the early nineteenth century through the end of World War II. By showing how a regionally based local economy successfully withstood the pressure from European capitalist markets and colonial aspirations, the book sheds new light on various generally accepted assumptions about the character of colonial economies and their integration into global export markets. It thus challenges the notion that colonial political, military, and elite intellectual hegemony translated directly or easily into regional economic hegemony. In making this argument, the book points to inherent weaknesses in the usual view of the colonial state, notably the failure to recognize sufficiently the enduring power of local processes - or local currents of culture and practice - to withstand empire and ultimately shape the experience of colonialism.

About the Author:

Richard L. Roberts is Professor of History at Stanford University. He is the author of Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700-1914 (Stanford, 1987).

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0804726523
• ISBN 13: 9780804726528
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396