"Rubber will not keep in this country": Failed development in Benin, 1897-1921

Fenske, James (2010): "Rubber will not keep in this country": Failed development in Benin, 1897-1921.

Abstract

Nigeria's Benin region was a major rubber producer in 1960. In 1921, however, the government abandoned the industry as a failure. I explain why rubber did not take hold before 1921. British conquest was motivated in part by the region's wild rubber resources. The government was unable to protect Benin's rubber forests from over-exploitation. Expatriate firms were reticent to invest in plantations, and private African plantations remained small. The colonial government promoted the development of ``communal'' plantations, but these suffered from labor scarcity, a weak state, limited information, and global competition.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Nigeria; Benin; rubber; development
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N5 - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, and Extractive Industries > N57 - Africa ; Oceania; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O13 - Agriculture ; Natural Resources ; Energy ; Environment ; Other Primary Products

References

Agbo, A. E. (1970). Sir Ralph Moor and the economic development of Southern Nigeria, 1896- 1903. Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 5(3):396{421.

Amanor, K. S. (1994). The New Frontier: Farmers' Response to Land Degradation{A West African Study. Zed Books, London.

Anschel, K. R. (1965). Economic aspects of peasant rubber production in Midwestern Nigeria.

Arrighi, G. (1970). Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia. Journal of Development Studies, 6(3):197{234.

Austin, G. (2005). Labour, land, and capital in Ghana: from slavery to free labour in Asante, 1807-1956. University of Rochester Press, Rochester, NY.

Austin, G. (2008). Resources, techniques, and strategies south of the Sahara: revising the factor endowments perspective on African economic development, 1500-2001. The Economic History Review, 61(3):587{624.

Bandiera, O. and Rasul, I. (2006). Social networks and technology adoption in northern Mozambique. The Economic Journal, 116(514):869{902.

Barham, B. L. and Coomes, O. T. (1994). Reinterpreting the Amazon rubber boom: investment, the state, and Dutch disease. Latin American Research Review, 29(2):73{109.

Bassett, T. J. (2001). The peasant cotton revolution in West Africa, C^ote d'Ivoire, 1880-1995. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Becroft, C. (1841). On Benin and the upper course of the river Quorra, or Niger. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 11:184{192.

Bell, H. (1907). African tree rubber. (Funtumia elastica, Stapf.). Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens, Kew), 1907(5):187{190.

Berry, S. (1975). Cocoa, custom, and socio-economic change in rural Western Nigeria. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Besley, T. (1995). Property rights and investment incentives: Theory and evidence from Ghana. Journal of Political Economy, 103(5):903{37.

Besley, T. and Case, A. (1994). Diusion as a Learning Process: Evidence from HYV Cotton. Research Program in Development Studies, Center of International Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Aairs.

Beusekom, M. M. V. (2002). Negotiating development: African farmers and colonial experts at the Oce du Niger, 1920-1960. James Currey Ltd.

Blanckenburg, P. (1965). Rubber farming in Benin area, a study of some socio-economic factors in uencing rubber production. Preliminary Report.

Bradbury, R. E. (1957). The Benin kingdom and the Edo-speaking peoples of south-western Nigeria. International African Institute. Bradbury, R. E. (1973). Benin studies. Oxford University Press.

Brett, E. (1973). Colonialism and underdevelopment in East Africa: the politics of economic change, 1919-1939. NOK Publishers.

Bromund, T. (1997). Field of dreams: An environmental approach to the origins and failures of the East African groundnuts scheme, 1946-1948. Working Paper.

Brown, C. A. (2003). \We were all slaves": African miners, culture, and resistance at the Enugu government colliery. Greenwood Press.

Bubb, R. (2009). States, law, and property rights in West Africa. Working Paper.

Burton, R. (1863). My wanderings in West Africa: A visit to the renowned cities of Wari and

Benin. Fraser's Magazine, pages 135{157, 273{289, 407{422.

Christy, C. (1911). The African rubber industry and Funtumia elastica (\kickxia"). J. Bale, Sons & Danielson, Limited.

Conley, T. G. and Udry, C. (2010). Learning about a new technology: Pineapple in Ghana. American Economic Review.

Coomes, O. T. and Barham, B. L. (1994). The Amazon rubber boom: Labor control, resistance, and failed plantation development revisited. Hispanic American Historical Review, 74(2):231{257.

Dumett, R. (1971). The rubber trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the nineteenth century: African innovation and market responsiveness. Journal of African History, pages 79{101.

Egboh, E. O. (1985). Forestry policy in Nigeria, 1897-1960. University of Nigeria Press.

Egharevba, J. U. (1936). A short history of Benin. Church Missionary Society Bookshop.

Egharevba, J. U. (1949). Benin law and custom. Niger Press.

Engerman, S. L. and Sokolo, K. L. (1997). Factor endowments, institutions, and dierential paths of growth among new world economies, pages 260{304. How Latin America Fell Behind. Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800-1914. Stanford University Press.

Fairhead, J. and Leach, M. (1996). Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic. Cambridge University Press.

Ferguson, J. (1990). The anti-politics machine: \Development," depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Cambridge University Press.

Fifer, J. V. (1970). The empire builders: a history of the Bolivian rubber boom and the rise of the house of Suarez. Journal of Latin American Studies, 2(2):113{146.

Forde, C. D., Scott, R. C., and Perham, M. (1946). The native economies of Nigeria. Faber and Faber.

Foster, A. D. and Rosenzweig, M. R. (2001). Learning by doing and learning from others: Human capital and technical change in agriculture. Readings in the Theory of Economic Development.

Foster, A. D. and Rosenzweig, M. R. (2010). Microeconomics of technology adoption. Working Paper.

Frankema, E. (2010). Real wages in British Africa, 1880-1940. Working Paper.

Harms, R. (1975). The end of red rubber: A reassessment. The Journal of African History, 16(1):73{88.

Hochschild, A. (1998). King Leopold's ghost. Houghton Miin.

Hopkins, A. G. (1976). Imperial business in Africa part II. interpretations. The Journal of African History, 17(02):267{290.

Igbafe, P. A. (1970). The fall of Benin: A reassessment. The Journal of African History, 11(3):385{ 400.

Igbafe, P. A. (1975). Slavery and emancipation in Benin, 1897-1945. The Journal of African History, 16(3):409{429.

Igbafe, P. A. (1979). Benin under British administration: the impact of colonial rule on an African kingdom, 1897-1938. Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.

Isaacman, A. F. (1996). Cotton is the mother of poverty : peasants, work, and rural struggle in colonial Mozambique, 1938-1961. Heinemann, Portsmonth, N.H.

Jones, W. O. (1959). Manioc in Africa. Stanford University Press.

Maack, P. (1996). \We don't Want Terraces." Protest and Identity under the Uluguru Land Usage Scheme. Custodians of the land: ecology & culture in the history of Tanzania. James Curry.

Mackenzie, F. (1998). Land, Ecology and Resistance in Kenya, 1880-1952. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

McCann, J. (2005). Maize and grace: Africa's encounter with a New World crop, 1500-2000. Harvard University Press.

Munro, J. F. (1981). Monopolists and speculators: British investment in West African rubber, 1905-1914. The Journal of African History, 22(2):263{278.

Munro, J. F. (1983). British rubber companies in East Africa before the First World War. The Journal of African History, 24(3):369{379.

Nunn, N. and Qian, N. (2009). The potato's contribution to population and urbanization: Evidence from an historical experiment. NBER Working Paper.

Ofonagoro, W. I. (1979). Trade and imperialism in Southern Nigeria 1881-1929. NOK Publishers International.

Okpeke, L. (1992). Tropical Tree Crops. Spectrum Books Limited, Onitsha.

Omosini, O. (1979). The rubber export trade in Ibadan, 1893-1904: Colonial innovation or rubber economy. Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 10:21{46.

Osborn, E. L. (2004). `Rubber fever', commerce and French colonial rule in upper Guinee, 1890- 1913. Journal of African history, 45(3):445{465.

Ostrom, E. (1991). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.

Pearson, H. C. (1918). Crude rubber and compounding ingredients: a textbook of rubber manufacture. The India rubber publishing company.

Phillips, A. (1989). The Enigma of Colonialism: British Policy in West Africa. Indiana University Press.

Rae, G. (1938). The statistics of the rubber industry. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 101(2):317{375.

Resor, R. R. (1977). Rubber in Brazil: Dominance and collapse, 1876-1945. The Business History Review, 51(3):341{366.

Roberts, R. and Miers, S. (1988). The end of slavery in Africa, pages 3{68. The end of slavery in Africa. University of Wisconsin Press.

Rowling, C. W. (1948). Notes on Land Tenure in the Benin, Kukuruku, Ishan and Asaba Divisions of Benin Province. Lagos: Government Printers.

Rubert, S. C. (1998). A most promising weed: a history of tobacco farming and labor in colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1945. Ohio University Press.

Ryder, A. F. C. (1969). Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897. Humanities Press.

Usuanlele, U. (n.d.). Paper title T.B.A. This will replace outdated references to his MA and PhD theses. Working Paper.

von Hellermann, P. (2005). things fall apart? a political ecology of 20th century forest management in Edo State, southern Nigeria.

von Hellermann, P. (2007). Things fall apart? management, environment, and taungya farming in Edo state, southern nigeria. Africa, 77(3):371.

von Hellermann, P. and Usuanlele, U. (2009). The owner of the land: The Benin Obas and colonial forest reservation in the Benin Division, Southern Nigeria. The Journal of African History, 50(02):223{246.

Voon, P. K. (1976). Western rubber planting enterprise in southeast Asia, 1876-1921.

WALC (1916). Minutes of evidence. West African Lands Committee.

Weinstein, B. (1983). The Amazon rubber boom, 1850-1920. Stanford University Press.

Woodru, W. (1955). Growth of the rubber industry of Great Britain and the United States. Journal of Economic History, 15(4):376{391.