Educating the Middlemen: A Political and Economic History of Statutory Cocoa Marketing in Nigeria, 1936-1947.

This thesis attempts to describe the evolution of a single economic institution in Nigeria: The Nigerian Cocoa Marketing Board. The Board was set up in 1947 in order to control the buying and selling of cocoa and to regulate the activities of cocoa traders and buying firms. Such a narrow focus is justified on the grounds that the development of cocoa marketing institutions in Nigeria epitomises an important aspect of the development of the Nigerian political economy between the 1930s and 1950s. When war broke out in 1939, the Ministry of Food assumed control over the external marketing trade of all major Nigerian export commodities, including cocoa. The responsibility for the cocoa control scheme was subsequently transferred to the Colonial Office. Already in 1941, the Colonial Office and the West African governments, including the Nigerian government, began to discuss whether it would be desirable to continue or terminate statutory marketing control after the war. The decision to establish the Nigerian Cocoa Marketing Board was largely taken because the Colonial Office and the West African governments believed that statutory marketing provided a convenient administrative solution for the recurrent political conflicts in the 1930s cocoa trade. These conflicts revolved around the strained commercial relationship between European trading firms and African traders and reached a climax in the West African 1937/38 cocoa hold-up crisis. The main argument in this thesis is that, at the end of the war, the colonial authorities, parts of the nationalist movement in Nigeria, and a number of smaller African and European trading firms came to the conclusion that a return to the 1930s 'free trade' regime and its conflicts would not suit their long-term political and economic interests. This implicit consensus allowed the Colonial Office to surmount strong opposition from American, British and West African trading interests against the scheme in the politically sensitive post-war period

Nanoscale Structure of the Oil-Water Interface

X-ray reflectivity (XR) and atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, carried out to determine the structure of the oil-water interface, provide new insight into the simplest liquid-liquid interface. For several oils (hexane, dodecane, and hexadecane) the XR shows very good agreement with a monotonic interface-normal electron density profile (EDP) broadened only by capillary waves. Similar agreement is also found for an EDP including a sub-Å thick electron depletion layer separating the oil and the water. The XR and MD derived depletions are much smaller than reported for the interface between solid-supported hydrophobic monolayers and water

Celebrating power in everyday life: the administration of law and the public sphere in colonial Tanzania, 1890-1914

The paper examines the way in which power was routinely exercised in colonial German East Africa in everyday life. In order to achieve domination rather than ruling just by brute force, the German administration set up district councils called Schauri, in which members of the local African élite were invited to act as advisors to the District Officer. The highly formalized meetings of the council were held in public at least once a week. The district officer had the final say in all matters. The council members deliberated the most mundane aspects of colonial rule. Yet the meetings also dealt with more substantive issues, such as the administration of law in the district, local political affairs or the latest public decree from the Governor in Dar es Salaam. The paper argues that the Schauri meetings constituted the most important field of political interaciton and engagement between the German rulers and their African subjects. These meetings were thus an indispensible part of what one might call the 'colonial public sphere'.N.B. Dr Deutsch is now based at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. Citation: 'Deutsch, J-G. (2002). 'Celebrating power in everyday life: the administration of law and the public sphere in colonial Tanzania, 1890-1914', Journal of African Cultural Studies 15(1), 93-103. © 2002 Journal of African Cultural Studies. [Available at http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1369-6815&volume=15&issue=1&spage=93]

West African labour and the development of mechanised mining in southwest Ghana, c.1870s to 1910

Wassa in southwest Ghana was the location of the largest mining sector in colonial British West Africa. The gold mines provide an excellent case study of how labour was mobilised for large-scale production immediately after the legal end of slavery, in the context of an expansive independent labour market. Divided into three sections, this thesis examines the practice of indirect labour recruitment for the mines during the formative years of colonial rule; the incorporation of ‘traditional’ credit relationships into ‘modern’ commerce. The starting point for this study is the analysis of precolonial strategies for mobilising labour. Part one examines the most pervasive and coercive employer-employee relationship in precolonial West Africa, namely the master-slave relationship. Even enslaved Africans could expect individual economic opportunity, and related to such, debt protection, and the power of labourers increased significantly after abolition. Starting in the 1870s, mine management found that the most effective way of recruiting long-term wage earners was through headmen; African authorities who established temporary patronage relationships with a group of labourers by offering them credit. Moreover, administrative and court records indicate that there were various forms of headship, some which the mines managed to impose greater regulation over than others. Therefore, part two demonstrates that issues of cost and control of recruitment differed depending on whether the labour recruiter had been furnished with the capital of a mining firm to conduct his business, whether he had done so with his own personal savings, or whether he was in the employment of the colonial government. Finally, part three takes a comparative look at headship and recruitment through rural chiefs, which began in 1906; two successive forms of non-free wage labour mobilisation. In 1909, mine management reverted to the headship system that many colonial commentators regarded as being more compatible with the colonial political order, albeit under considerably stricter regulations.This thesis is not currently available in ORA

Stories of a failed nation; Sudanese politics 1945–69

Between 1945 and 1969 the Sudanese achieved independence and overthrew a military junta with a popular uprising. Nevertheless both democratic periods were quickly ended by military coups. At the same time a civil war divided the country. The thesis asks why the democratic structures were so unstable, and unable to end the conflict between north and south. It argues that the ideas about the Sudanese nation by different groups were so contradictory, that no nation could be built. As a result, the political system failed to find a stable form and to deliver policy results to the constituents. The thesis is using political parties as units of analysis and primarily the constitutional process and, secondarily, questions of independence and sovereignty, as prisms. It discusses the history of the political parties within the context of the political history of Sudan. The discussions about the constitution are understood as one form of expressing ideas about the nation. The thesis presents the different suggestions for the constitution by different parties, especially in regards to governance, federalism, and religion. These contradictory ideas led to the failure of the constitution writing process. The thesis argues that the contradictory positions of the parties created a dual deadlock, which led to a breakdown of democracy. Firstly, due to reciprocal distrust, widely diverging platforms, and generally the difficulty of forming coalition governments, especially in the absence of a democratic tradition, coalitions became extremely unstable and politicians were forced to invest a lot of time and effort to keep coalitions alive and in consequence concrete political actions did not receive enough attention. Secondly, the divergent perceptions of the nation led to a situation where they stopped to see each other as part of the same nation and therefore stopped to recognise others as legitimately participating in the political process.This thesis is not currently available in ORA

Investing in ghosts: building and construction in Nigeria’s oil boom and bust c.1960-2000

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has been portrayed in scholarly literature as a prominent case of postcolonial African ‘growth failure’. Between 1960 and 2000 oil reserves were exploited resulting in revenues of more than $300 billion to the Nigerian government, while real per capita income fell over the same period. This thesis, by focusing on building and construction in Nigeria from 1960 to 2000, explains how and why Nigeria failed to invest its oil revenues to create long-term economic growth. Its findings have important implications for investment analyses of other commodity-rich countries in Africa and across the developing world. It draws on a wide range of primary quantitative and qualitative sources including government surveys, construction-related company financial data and project lists, industry publications, newspapers, and the correspondence files of a major Nigerian architecture firm. These are used to present a picture of historical building activity which includes a 40-year dataset of cement price and consumption, and a construction supply curve for both the oil boom and bust periods. By quantifying for the first time the long-observed ‘ghost construction’ of the oil boom, this thesis finds that annually about two thirds of what scholars and national accounts statistics had estimated was being invested in construction was never actually invested, implying that what was invested offered a greater return than has previously been acknowledged. Although investment in construction was overstated during the oil boom, during the oil bust construction was understated as major government projects were funded off-budget and away from public scrutiny. This thesis demonstrates that the most productive area of public investment has been infrastructure, and further that the private sector construction industry was a valuable asset which greatly enhanced the government’s ability to implement investment programmes, when it had the political will to do so. This thesis is not currently available in ORA