Palm Oil and Protest: An Economic History of the Ngwa Region, South-Eastern Nigeria, 1800-1980

by Susan M. Martin

Overview

This study examines the interaction between growing palm oil export production and changes in Ngwa patterns of food production and family relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It challenges the arguments of both dependency and vent-for-surplus theorists on the dominance of export-sector developments and the importance of changes initiated by Europeans. Local patterns of export growth and capital investment are shown to have been heavily influenced by independent changes in food production methods, gender and inter-generational relationships. Ngwa producers were affected by falling world prices, trading monopolies and colonial taxation. During the Igbo Women's War of 1929, Ngwa women protested vigorously against government interference and falling incomes, but failed to reverse either trend. The subsequent life stories of Ngwa men and women, set against a background of archival and anthropological evidence, provide the essential link between this historical experience and the current national problems of rural-urban drift and moribund export industries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521025577
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/20/2006
Series:	African Studies , #59
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.55(d)

Table of Contents

List of maps and figure; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 1. Introduction; 2. Ecology, society and economic change to 1891; 3. The Ngwa and colonial rule, 1891–1914; 4. The expansion of the oil palm industry, 1884–1914; 5. The end of the boom; 6. Cassava and Christianity; 7. Authority, justice and property rights; 8. Trade, credit and mobility; 9. Production and protest: the Women Riot, 1929; 10. Cash cropping and economic change, 1930–80; 11. Conclusion; Statistical appendix; Notes; Interviews conducted in the Ngwa region, 1980–1; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...Susan Martin has written a perceptive study, and a worthy successor to other major writers on the economic history of the eastern areas of Nigeria, from Dike through Jones to Northrup. She is to be congratulated." A.J.H. Latham, International Journal of African Historical Studies

From the Publisher