Slavery, Statehood and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Dirk Bezemer, Jutta Bolt () and Robert Lenzink
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Dirk Bezemer: Faculty of Economics, Groeningen University, Postal: P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, , The Netherlands
Jutta Bolt: Faculty of Economics, Groeningen University, Postal: P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, , The Netherlands
Robert Lenzink: Faculty of Economics, Groeningen University, Postal: P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, , The Netherlands

No 6/2012, African Economic History Working Paper from African Economic History Network

Abstract: This paper addresses the long-term impact of Sub-Saharan Africa’s indigenous systems of slavery on its political and economic development, based on an analytical survey of the literature and data collected from anthropological records. We develop a theory to account for this based on the framework proposed by North et al. (2009), where indigenous slavery may have impeded the transition from a ‘limited access state’ centred around personal relations to an ‘open access state’ based on impersonal rule of law and widely shared access to public and private organisations. In a quantitative analysis we find that indigenous slavery is robustly and negatively associated with the quality of governance and with current income levels.

Keywords: Africa; Slavery; States; colonialism; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N17 N27 N37 N47 N57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2012-12-18
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:afekhi:2012_006

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