What drove the profitability of colonial firms?: Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920-74)

Sam Jones and Peter Gibbon

No wp-2022-70, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the annual financial records of Sena Sugar Estates in Portuguese East Africa (today's Mozambique) over the period 1920-74 to probe the contributions of forced labour and preferential trade arrangements to the performance of the firm.

Keywords: Mozambique; Sugarcane; Forced labour; Trade preferences; Colonialism; Profitability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-eff, nep-his and nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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