Gareth Austin 
Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana [PDF ebook] 
From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956

An examination of the varied ways, outside and inside markets, in which Asante producers obtained labor, land and capital during the transformative era.


This is a study of the changing rules and relationships within which natural, human and man-made resources were mobilized for production during the development of an agricultural export economy in Asante, a major West African kingdom which became, by 1945, the biggest regional contributor to Ghana’s status as the world’s largest cocoa producer. The period 1807-1956 as a whole was distinguished in Asante history by relatively favorable political conditionsfor indigenous as well as [during colonial rule] for foreign private enterprise. It saw generally increasing external demands for products that could be produced on Asante land. This book, which fills a major gap in Asante economic history, transcends the traditional divide between studies of precolonial and of twentieth-century African history. It analyses the interaction of coercion and the market in the context of a rich but fragile natural environment, the central process being a transition from slavery and debt-bondage to hired labor and agricultural indebtedness. It contributes to the broad debate about Africa’s historic combination of emerging ‘capitalist’ institutions and persistent ‘precapitalist’ ones, and tests the major theories of the political economy of institutional change. It is written accessibly for an interdisciplinary readership.


Gareth Austin is a Lecturer in Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Joint Editor of the
Journal of African History.

Tabla de materias

Theories and Debates: Some Tools for Thinking about the History of Property and Markets in Asante and Beyond

Asante, 1807-1956: the State, Output and Resources

The Changing Relationship Between Inputs and Outputs, 1807-1956

Land Tenure, 1807-1896

The Mobilization of Labour, 1807-1896

Capital and Credit, 1807-1896

Factor Markets without Free Labour: The Nieboer Hypothesis and Asante Slavery and Pawnship, 1807-1896

Gender and Kinship Aspects of the Social Relations of Production, 1807-1896

Exploitation and Welfare: Class and ‘Social Efficiency’ Implications of the Property Rights Regime, 1807-1896

Why Was Prohibition So Long Delayed? The Nature and Motives of the Gradualism of the British ‘Men on the Spot’

The Decline of Coerced Labour and Property in Persons in Practice: Change from Above and from Below in Colonial Asante, 1896-1950

Cocoa and the Ending of Labour Coercion, c. 1900-c. 1950

Land Tenure: What Kind of Transformation under Cash-Cropping and Colonial Rule?

Capital and Credit: Locking Farms to Credit

Free Labour: Family Workers, the Spread of Wage Contracts, and the Rise of Sharecropping

Land in a Tree-Farm Economy

Capital in a Tree-Farm Economy

Free Labour: Why the Newly Emerged Wage Regular Wage Contracts Were Eclipsed by Sharecropping