Private Colonialism in Africa

Abstract

Abstract: We highlight the role of private concessionary companies in colonizing Sub-Saharan Africa and analyze companies’ practices’ lasting legacies. First, we map the universe of concession companies across Sub-Saharan Africa and all colonial epochs, codifying their operations (plantation agriculture, charter companies, forestry, mining, trading), practices (use of forced labor, violence, and oppression), infrastructure build-up (roads, railroads, ports), human capital investments (schools, and health facilities), and productive investments (factories, ginneries, trading posts). The concessionary paradigm is widespread across all imperial powers and all colonial periods, suggesting a critical omission of recent economics research. There is a sizable spatial variation within colony/protectorate and, over time, a gradual decline in violence, rising investments, and a switch from infrastructure to human capital investments. Second, we characterize the presence and practices of concessions across time. While in the early phase of African colonization, concession companies moved into the interior, over time, they concentrated their operations closer to the sea, lakes, and rivers, in more fertile land, and less disease. Extraction, forced labor, and extreme violence are relatively more pervasive in low-population-density areas, plagued by malaria and yellow fever, supporting theories stressing labor scarcity and an unfavorable disease environment in shaping colonial practices. Third, we explore the local legacy of the concessionary paradigm on contemporary development, estimating hundreds of spatial Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) analyses. There is wide heterogeneity in companies’ legacies as reflected in nighttime lights and development proxies from the Demographic and Health Surveys. The spatial RDD estimates are highly heterogeneous across all colonial powers and company types, [...].