The great inter-war depression has long been seen as an unprecedented economic disaster for the peoples of the non-European world. This book, with its detailed assessment of the impact of the depression on the economies of Africa and Asia, challenges the orthodox view, and is essential reading for those with a teaching or research interest in the modern economic history of those continents. Established specialists in the modern economic history of parts of Africa or Asia put forward a number of revisionist arguments. They show that some economies were left essentially unscathed by the depression, and that for many export-dependent peasant communities which did face a severe drop in cash income as world commodity prices collapsed from the late 1920s, there was a range of important responses and reactions by which they could defend their economic welfare. For many peasant communities the depression was not a disaster but an opportunity.

This text provides an overview of the Gambian groundnut trade, assessing the various political, economic, social and environmental forces, which shaped the trade locally and internationally, and their contemporary relevance to theperception and transformation of West African agriculture.

Cross-cultural exchange has characterized the economic life of India since antiquity. Its long coastline has afforded convenient access to Asia and Africa as well as trading partnerships formed in the exchange of commodities ranging from textiles to military technology and from opium to indigo. In a journey across two thousand years, this enthralling book, written by a leading South Asian historian, describes the ties of trade, migration, and investment between India and the rest of the world and shows how changing patterns of globalization have reverberated in economic policy, politics, and political ideology within India. Along the way, the book asks three major questions: Is this a particularly Indian story? When did the big turning points happen? And is it possible to distinguish the modern from the pre-modern pattern of exchange? These questions invite a new approach to the study of Indian history by placing the region at the center of the narrative. This is global history written on India's terms, and, as such, the book invites Indian, South Asian, and global historians to rethink both their history and their methodologies.

Part history, part biography, and part mystery story, Smokeless Sugar traces the formation of a national economy in China through an intriguing investigation of the 1936 execution of an allegedly corrupt Cantonese official. Feng Rui, a Western-educated agricultural expert, introduced modern sugar milling to China in the 1930s as a key component in a provincial investment program. Before long, however, he was accused of colluding with smugglers to pass foreign sugar off as a domestic product. Emily Hill makes the case that Feng was, in fact, a scapegoat in a multi-sided power struggle in which political leaders vied with commercial players for access to China's markets and tax revenues.

Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.