Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Africa in world history before ca. 1440 / Christopher Ehret -- Reversal of fortune and socioeconomic development in the Atlantic world : a comparative examination of West Africa and the Americas, 1400-1850 / Joseph Inikori -- The impact of malaria on African development over the Longue duree / David N. Weil -- Africa population, 1650-2000 : comparisons and implications of new estimates / Patrick Manning -- Redistributive pressures in Sub-Saharan Africa : causes, consequences, and coping strategies / Jean-Philippe Platteau -- Accumulation and conspicuous consumption : the poverty of entrepreneurship in western Nigeria, ca. 1850-1930 / Ayodeji Olukoju -- Commerce, credit, and mobility in late nineteenth-century gold coast: changing dynamics in Euro-African trade / Emmanuel Akyeampong -- The textile industry of eastern Africa in the Longue duree / William Gervase Clarence-Smith -- Explaining and evaluating the cash crop revolution in the "peasant" colonies of tropical Africa, ca. 1890-ca.1930 : beyond "vent-for-surplus" / Gareth Austin -- Re-inventing the wheel : the economic benefits of wheeled transportation in early colonial British West Africa / Isaias Chaves, Stanley L. Engerman, and James A. Robinson -- Mbanza Kongo/São Salvador : culture and the transformation of an African city, 1491 to 1670s / Linda Heywood -- The fragile revolution : rethinking war and development in Africa's violent nineteenth century / Richard Reid -- The imperial peace / Robert Bates -- Dahomey in the world : Dahomean rulers and European demands, 1726-1894 / John Thornton -- The Transatlantic slave trade and the evolution of political authority in West Africa / Warren C. Whatley -- Gender and missionary influence in colonial Africa / Nathan Nunn.

This edited volume addresses the root causes of Africa's persistent poverty through an investigation of its longue durée history. It interrogates the African past through disease and demography, institutions and governance, African economies and the impact of the export slave trade, colonialism, Africa in the world economy, and culture's influence on accumulation and investment. Several of the chapters take a comparative perspective, placing Africa's developments aside other global patterns. The readership for this book spans from the informed lay reader with an interest in Africa, academics and undergraduate and graduate students, policy makers, and those in the development world.