Article ID: CBB001421537

The Plantation Paradigm: Colonial Agronomy, African Farmers, and the Global Cocoa Boom, 1870s--1940s (2014)

unapi

This article investigates the powerful normative role of plantation-oriented agricultural practices in what was arguably the premier indigenous crop revolution of the colonial era: the West African cocoa boom. It traces the links between the extraordinary growth of cocoa production in the region -- above all in the Gold Coast -- and the longer experience of cocoa estates in other parts of the world, in particular the Caribbean, which served as a key reference point for the expanding global cocoa frontier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In spite of the manifest competitive success of African farmers' extensive agricultural practices during this period, most outside observers retained a strong partiality towards intensive production techniques under centralized European management. This article emphasizes the role played by the transcontinental exchange of ideas in sustaining the cultural authority of such cultivation techniques long after their commercial viability came into question.

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Authors & Contributors
Piero Brunello
Anja Timmermann
Jim Mills
Kerkhoff, Kathinka Sinha
Besky, Sarah
Casey, Matthew
Concepts
Agriculture
Economic botany; plant cultivation; horticulture
Farmers
Plantations
Colonialism
Agronomy
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
20th century, early
Early modern
21st century
Places
United States
India
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Veneto
Gambia
Angola
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