Logo
Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Ecology, trade and states in pre-colonial Africa

Fenske, James (2010): Ecology, trade and states in pre-colonial Africa.

Warning
There is a more recent version of this item available.
[thumbnail of MPRA_paper_27203.pdf]
Preview
PDF
MPRA_paper_27203.pdf

Download (735kB) | Preview

Abstract

I test Bates' view that trade across ecological divides promoted the development of states in pre-colonial Africa. My main result is that sub-Saharan societies in ecologically diverse environments had more centralized pre-colonial states. I use spatial variation in rainfall to control for possible endogeneity. I construct artificial societies and present narrative evidence to show the results are not due to conquest of trading regions. I also test mechanisms by which trade may have caused states, and find that trade supported class stratification between rulers and ruled.

Available Versions of this Item

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact us: mpra@ub.uni-muenchen.de

This repository has been built using EPrints software.

MPRA is a RePEc service hosted by Logo of the University Library LMU Munich.