Modern Inland Transport and the European Trading Firms in Colonial West Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Modern Inland Transport and the European Trading Firms in Colonial West Africa
Author:	Laan, H. Laurens van der
Year:	1981
Periodical:	Cahiers d'études africaines
Volume:	21
Issue:	84
Pages:	547-575
Language:	English
Geographic term:	West Africa
Subjects:	colonial history foreign enterprises transport colonialism Economics and Trade History and Exploration
External link:	https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1981.2286
Abstract:	In West Africa the modernisation of transport began towards the end of the 19th century. There is a general consensus that modern transport, by permitting long-haul trade in bulky produce, led to an expansion of production and trade in this region. These macroeconomic effects are taken for granted. Instead, the author investigates the response to new transport technology and infrastructure on the part of the large European trading companies which operated in West Africa during the colonial period. The direct effects of modern transport are discussed in terms of the advance of the firms into the interior (by river, rail, or road); the structure and organisation of the firms; and their whitdrawal from the interior in the 1950s and 1960s. A preliminary version of this article was published in 1980 by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, in its series: 'Working Papers', no. 1. Bibliogr., notes, French sum. p. 624.