Paper short abstract:

Around 95% of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s total national exports derive from just three metal commodities: copper, cobalt, and gold. The proposed paper seeks to explain how this situation came about, and why it has endured through more than six decades of post-independence development.

Paper long abstract:

Today, around 95 percent of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) total national exports derive from just three metal commodities: copper, cobalt, and gold. How did this situation come about, and why has it endured through more than six decades of post-independence development? In seeking to answer these questions, the paper develops a two-fold argument. First, the paper contends that two defining outcomes of the DRC’s colonial encounter with Belgium (1885-1960) were the forced and violent integration of rural regions into commodity production for the international market on highly exploitative terms, and the suppression of precolonial indigenous productive activity and trading networks in favour of Belgian financial capital, solicited primarily to develop the mining and transport sectors.

Second, the paper argues that commodity dependence in the DRC has been continually reproduced during the post-independence period through an unwavering but misguided faith in the mining sector’s potential to deliver broader based processes of industrialisation and structural transformation. Above and beyond the role of internal dynamics and issues of ownership and control, the paper documents three structural constraints that have continually undermined efforts towards mining-led industrialisation in the DRC, in the form of price volatility, enclavity, and low levels of labour absorption. In delivering this line of argument, the paper challenges the widely held view that the roots of the DRC’s economic malaise can be found in state mismanagement, inefficiencies, and corruption. For all of this, the paper draws on a wide range of archival material, secondary data, and interviews.

Paper short abstract:

We argue that relations and hierarchies among metropoles give rise to specific forms of colonialism. This paper demonstrates how these forms of colonialism created legacies that continue to condition contemporary structures of specialization and commodity dependence in Lusophone Africa.

Paper long abstract:

In a widely-used definition, dependence refers to the expansion of dominant countries as ‘self-sustaining’ while that of dependent countries is ‘conditioned’ (Dos Santos, 1970:231). Breaking with this dichotomy, Rodney (1972) argues that dependence is not only engendered and perpetuated by the bilateral relations between coloniser and colonised, but also through the nested hierarchies of empires, colonies, and the interplay between their different trajectories of development. Commodity dependence in former Portuguese colonies in Africa dramatically illustrates this point, by showing how the international subordination of Portugal itself fostered the porous character of the capital infrastructure set up in the colonies. Building on Rodney’s insights, this paper explores how different metropoles' ability and willingness to facilitate domestic capital accumulation in the colonies shaped the productive structures and social relations of production that were established during the colonial time and how these structures and relations are dynamically reproduced until today. By utilising a critical political economy framework grounded in global history and based on historical time-series data on trade and production as well as selected commodity case studies through colonial and post-colonial times, continuities and ruptures in structures of production and exports are characterised for three former Portuguese colonies in Africa: Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Focusing on the former Portuguese empire in Africa enables us to scrutinize how specific forms of colonialism created legacies that continue to condition contemporary structures of specialization and commodity dependence and the processes through which these structures are dynamically reproduced.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the persistence of commodity dependence by examining processes of upgrading along the diamond value chain in Botswana. It highlights how the evolution of ownership structures reflects complex power dynamics regarding the creation and addition of value of natural resources.

Paper long abstract:

Resource-rich countries face the challenge of transforming resource wealth into long-term growth. Upgrading along value chains by adding value to raw materials through processing generally commands higher prices in the global market which can lead to increased revenue and economic development. This study explores the persistence of commodity dependency in Botswana by examining the various historical and economic factors which influence processes of upgrading along the diamond value chain. This research draws on literature focusing on global value chain development and political economy of commodity dependence to investigate how the evolution of ownership structures in Botswana’s diamond industry reflects colonial roots of commodity dependence. Emerging questions include, what is the role of the state in creating and shaping upgrading processes in the diamond value chain? How do ownership structures reflect redistribution of power in Botswana diamond value chain? Using document reviews, secondary literature and semi-structured interviews, the paper maps out the evolving ownership structure of Botswana’s diamond value chain from 1960s to date. The paper argues that the redistribution of ownership structures along Botswana’s diamond industry reflects the complexity of power dynamics between resource-rich countries and multinationals corporations regarding the creation and addition of value to natural resources. The paper contributes to literature exploring the relationship between colonial roots of commodity dependence and global value chain development in African resource-rich countries.

Paper short abstract:

This article asks why Nigeria accumulates foreign exchange reserves (FXR), tracing its origins to the role of imperial money to destroy and replac precolonial social and economic relations with an import-dependent economy that self-generates the necessity for FXR accumulation.

Paper long abstract:

This article offers an investigation into why Nigeria accumulates foreign exchange reserves (FXR), tracing its origins to the transformation phase during British colonial rule when precolonial currency systems were forcefully replaced with British imperial money.

Using a Marxist theory of money, this article offers a new conceptualization of imperial money, to understand how imperial money was a central tool to destroy and replace precolonial social and economic relations with an import-dependent economy that self-generates the necessity for FXR accumulation. Consequently, the structure of Nigeria’s FXR accumulation and the associated crisis can only be understood as a deep structural crisis of the underlying economy rather than as a monetary policy issue.

Employing a mixed-method analysis, the empirical section engages mainstream economic analysis of different FXR adequacy ratios and their explanatory power based on Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and World Bank data. These adequacy ratios provide the puzzle of FXR being a mirror of the needs and insufficiencies of the real economy, but remain limited in answering the question of why Nigeria started accumulating FXR. Therefore, in a second empirical step, this article uses novel archival material to trace the origins of FXR accumulation.

Paper short abstract:

This work will show that Brazilian dependence, marked by colonization, structural heterogeneity and asymmetry in international trade, has historically been maintained. To this end, we will show the evolution of Brazilian foreign trade and job creation, by technological intensity.

Paper long abstract:

The dependency relationship, associated with colonization, is characterized by the partial absorption of technological progress, the heterogeneity of the productive structure, the asymmetry in international trade between developed and underdeveloped countries, as well as the creation of precarious jobs.

The rise of neoliberal reforms in the late 1980s not only corroborated the decrease in employment and value added in sectors with greater technological content, but also meant reinforcing the chains of underdevelopment and dependence. The subsequent technological revolutions, such as the 4th Industrial Revolution, driven by central countries, replace the issue of dependence with the insertion of Brazil (and the periphery) in the links with the lowest value added of the Global Value Chains (GVC).

Understanding this phenomenon can benefit a lot from an analysis of the trade balance and its connection with the labor market, shedding light on the Brazilian development model and on the contemporary characteristics of dependence and subalternity.

In this sense, the objective of this work is to show how Brazilian dependence was maintained over time and gained new contours after the 1980s. To do so, we will rescue the structuralist approach of the Dependency Theory (TD) to analyze the evolution of Brazilian foreign trade and the pattern of formal job creation, both by technological intensity and between 1990 and 2022. We will use data from the Foreign Trade Secretariat (SECEX) of the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade and the Annual Social Information List ( RAIS) from the Ministry of Labour.

Paper short abstract:

Strict regulations governed Kenya's farming, processing and trade of coffee through the colonial period and for three decades post-independence. Twenty years after liberalization, the country continues to primarily export green beans. This paper examines the mechanisms that perpetuate this trend.

Paper long abstract:

Coffee was first grown in Kenya in 1893, and it was illegal for Africans to grow coffee for the following three decades. After Kenya's independence in 1963, coffee farming, processing and trade was highly regulated until the early 1990's when liberalization measures were adopted. This resulted in the entry of numerous actors in the crop's processing and trade activities. However, the anticipated effect of increased farmer incomes through reduced costs and higher coffee prices did not occur. Significantly, over 90% of coffee exports continues to be in the form of green beans, and few coffee cooperatives have vertically integrated into the coffee chain to process coffee for the domestic market. This paper will analyze the post-independent coffee regulations and reforms, and classify their focal activity into three broad categories; production, processing, and trade. The means of achieving their stated goal will be divided into legal reforms, institutional changes, and economic incentives. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether the regulations and reforms have reinforced colonial structures and mechanisms of coffee production and trade, or are geared towards gaining commodity sovereignty.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the colonial origins of oil dependence in Nigeria through the lens of the revenue allocation system, situating contestation over the formal distribution of revenues to the states at the centre of the struggle to diversify and transform the economy.

Paper long abstract:

The development literature is replete with analyses of Nigeria’s engagement with extractives, often drawing on the resource curse literature to provide explanations for its struggles to diversify its economy and undergo structural transformation. Undoubtedly, the acceleration towards an oil-based rentier state under military rule represents a pivotal moment in the historical trajectory of the country, reducing the expansion and competitiveness of Nigeria’s agriculture and manufacturing industries. Yet, the indelible impression left by the spread of colonial interests and authority on Nigeria’s capitalist development and the present-day economy and state cannot be ignored. Taking a mixed-methods approach based on empirical fieldwork interviews with politicians and technocrats and statistical analysis, this paper will discuss commodity dependence in Nigeria not purely as a response to the influx of revenue during the 70s and 80s, but a phenomenon at the intersection of resource wealth and a political settlement established under colonial rule. The analysis will explore how the colonial era embedded a set of interests and ideas that favoured accumulation at the expense of productive activity and pan-Nigerian progress.

Alongside this, colonial engineering of ethno-regional tension and an imbalanced federation contributed towards centring the revenue allocation system as an arena of contestation within Nigeria’s political settlement. Fostering subnational reliance on federal transfers, the dampening effect of the system on innovation and broader productive potential is evident. Though progress has been made, efforts to transition the economy towards a more diversified economic base are resisted by those wishing to maintain a distributive status quo.

Paper short abstract:

Commodities that have long colonial history influences the nature of participation in GVCs. The colonial roots of natural rubber in Malaysia have led to state support for domestic large firms joining GVCs to the detriment of smallholders and the disintegration of domestic production linkages.

Paper long abstract:

This paper finds that the nature of a country’s participation in GVCs based on commodities with a long colonial history, are very much influenced by the legacies of the colonial production structure, which persists till today. Malaysia’s natural rubber which has its origins under the British colonial administration in the 1890s, had prioritised British-owned large estates and large firms to the disadvantage of peasant smallholders and domestic manufacturing firms (Lim, 1977). Research and Innovation were intensively pursued by the British colonial administration, leading to Malaya being the largest exporter of natural rubber (Rajarao, 2013). This innovative production mechanisms were applied to large estates and to manufacturing technologies in Britain itself. In the years of rubber price collapse, the British administration sought ways to stabilise the price to protect British interest. In the early years post-independence in Malaysia, during the classical through the two-tier developmentalism phase (Haggard, 2018; Sumner, 2018), measures were put in place to uplift the socio-economic conditions of smallholders. With the advent of GVCs, large domestic firms specialising in products using natural rubber emerged, but their reliance on domestic natural rubber production declined. The GVC structure does not emphasise production linkages (Neilson, 2014) between the large domestic firms and the smallholders, as how it was during the colonial period. The state has played less of a coordinating role in this recent period of mainstreaming developmentalism (Fine & Mohamed, 2022), which focuses on the micro-structures of the needs of large domestic firms in joining the GVCs.

Paper short abstract:

Dependency theory theorised colonial continuities in commodity sectors by focusing on external trade relations and but was discredited with the East Asia Miracle'. The paper seeks to identify frameworks that help analyse the colonial patterns and reproduction of export specialisation.

Paper long abstract:

Dependency theory theorises the ongoing colonial division of labour in the global economy. Its central thesis is that colonised countries continue to face structural limits to socio-economic transformation such as resource extractivism (Rodney 1973), dependent accumulation (Amin 1974) and financial dependence (Nkrumah 1965, Amin 1976). Some authors also focus specifically on the role of commodity production in countries’ unequal integration into the capitalist world market (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1977, 1994).Yet, most of these perspectives have been criticised for overfocusing on the role of external relations in peripheral countries economic development and dressing a too binary and unilineal picture of colonial history, and also been discredited by the Southeast Asian Economic ‘Miracle’ (Palma 2016). Against the backdrop of the cold war, development economists started turning away from historical analysis of social change and structural economic transformation (Gore 2000). Instead, attention shifted to improving poor economic performance through good governance and liberalisation according to Washington Consensus principles (Sender 1999) and, eventually, to achieving peripheral countries strategic integration into Global Value Chains (Gereffi 1994). Colonial continuities have only been readdressed recently by calls for a comeback of dependency theory as a research agenda (Kvangraven 2021) and structuralist subordinate financialisation literature (Bonizzi et al 2019). The paper assesses the place of colonial path dependencies in development economics from the discipline’s inception after WWII until today in order to identify valuable frameworks for the study of colonial patterns in commodity dependence today.

Paper short abstract:

Global supply chains require mass infrastructure investment. This built environment was foundational to colonial projects; today it shapes these export economies through its impact on urbanization. We see this in colonial railroads’ continued influence on Ghana’s cocoa production and urban growth.

Paper long abstract:

Urbanists and geographers have long known that our world economic system is rooted in the built environment. Infrastructure built to facilitate urban life and livelihoods not only influences the jobs we take, the housing we can access, and the communities we build; it shapes the way economies interact with one another through trade and transport access. This is no accident.

The funding, building, and maintenance of urban structures requires capital, labor, and political power. Historically, those with access to all three have been able to shape the world economy to their advantage, reinvesting wealth gained through favorable trade in their continued economic growth. Over time, this pattern has evolved, but not fundamentally changed.

Dependency theory identifies this pattern and centers it in the built environment of the Metropole. Colonial infrastructure investment built the cities of today, and through them, the world economy as we know it: today’s global commodity chains are built upon and rely on the continuation of these lopsided trade dynamics.

Understanding the history of colonial urban development illuminates the relationship between this pattern of labor devaluation and resource extraction and the built environment.

Our case study centers on the history of Ghana’s now-defunct rail lines. Built by the British colonial project between 1896 and 1923, their placement, maintenance, and utility were foundational to both Ghana’s current rural-urban divide and the creation of the Cocoa industry. Ghana's role as a major cocoa exporter today comes from these investment and their continued impact on urbanization.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the colonial roots of commodity dependence from the perspective of macroeconomic policy regimes and argues that commodity specialization persisted in economies unable to break out of colonial entanglement in peripheral hierarchies towards the upgrading of production capabilities.

Paper long abstract:

Two complementary yet usually distinct literatures, Latin American Structuralism (LAS) and the Global Production Network (GPN) approach shed light on the issue of enduring colonial commodity dependence. LAS lends rich insights to this topic by centering asymmetries between core and periphery economies in the realms of productive capabilities and macroeconomic policy control which are then linked to the GPN literature which demonstrates the importance of upgrading and enabling institutions and policies such as regulation to direct foreign investment to capability-generating production sectors. This paper argues that the inability to break out of macroeconomic hierarchies present in colonial and post-colonial eras; namely those of currency and capital investment, has hindered the ability of colonial economies to break out of commodity dependence. Colonial macroeconomic policy regimes and their post-colonial evolutions tended to lock economies into a pattern of commodity dependence as they did not recognize imbalances and hierarchies in structural macroeconomic power over trade and investment necessitating a coherent statist response. This paper provides a methodological framework by which to conceptualize the process of capability formation and the role that colonial macroeconomic and industrial policy management played historically and its evolution. It also provides an overview of available historical data on macroeconomic policy regimes, exports, and inbound investment composition pre- and post-colonialism globally. Utilizing this framework and historical data on British capital flows and British colonial trade, it demonstrates how colonial patterns of trade and investment endure due to a lack of macroeconomic production capability-generating policies and institutions.

Paper short abstract:

The coloniality of the allocation of water resources perpetuates accumulation by dispossession by those who hold historically privileged access to water. This leads to the perpetuation of social inequalities.

Paper long abstract:

This article contends that the coloniality of the allocation of water resources perpetuates accumulation by dispossession by those who hold historically privileged access to water. Colonial times have created water elites when water resources for irrigation purposes were concentrated in the hands of a few powerful entities. In the present, these water elites use their water privilege to accumulate further by diverting abstracted water to uses other than irrigation. In this process, local communities are marginalised. This coloniality of water resource allocation is based on the underlying structures and power relations forming stable political settlements. A symbiotic relationship between the State and the water elite explains the State’s active support for this continued accumulation by dispossession, in the process of which the State obtains legitimisation and vindication. A case study of the Mauritian water elite originating from colonial sugar estates sheds light on this empirically understudied question of the legacy and coloniality of water resource allocation.

Paper short abstract:

Colonialist exploitation of cotton in India was an extractive process that warped local methods to suit its needs. These changes to the diversity of traditions in farming, spinning, dyeing, and weaving persist in today's globalised production. We present and theorise some of this history.

Paper long abstract:

Export pressures do not simply incentivise local communities into producing in ways that suit remote needs, but also actively harm ways of production that prefer to remain local (Goldsmith 2014). Cotton prices move in tandem with financial markets but do not reflect constraints faced by farmers or artisans. As a result, artisans who require cotton in order to practice their craft do not find themselves able to charge proportionately more for their products when their input costs rise.

Cotton was key to colonialist exploitation in India (Logan 1958). In order to make exploitation more efficient, traditions of cotton farming and textile production were made to suit British manufacturing rather than local constraints (Riello 2013). Such changes included making indigo dye into solid cakes rather than liquid paste, baling cotton to better transport it to England, and preventing weavers from accessing yarn. These changes persist, if through new inferiorities, in today’s modern world. Baling technology has become more efficient, indigenous cotton varieties are abandoned in favour of a standardised American BT crop, and yarn is spun in cone - rather than hank - form to better suit electrically powered looms. All these changes benefit the highly capital-dependent Western production that does not value local knowledge or skill.

In this way, the driving force behind British exploitation of Indian cotton remains intact, as does the eventual result of such exploitation. Correct understanding of how exactly such exploitation has persisted in today’s world is key to unmaking them.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines issues of internal colonialism rooted in cotton production in southeast Turkey—an ‘unruly habitat’ with a history of conflict, environmentally unsuitable for this crop. It is a reflection on the way the state intervenes in production and social reproduction for geopolitical aims.

Paper long abstract:

Social reproduction approaches have provided valuable understandings of capitalist dynamics across the world. Nevertheless, the state in its multiple configurations has been relatively neglected in this literature, which has mainly focused on governance and the neoliberal welfare state in Europe and North America. This paper aims at contributing to a deeper understanding of the state—including the security and developmental state—in securing, and at times jeopardizing, social reproduction by bringing feminist political economy literature in conversation with dependency and postcolonial scholarship. It draws on several months of participant observation and interviews between 2020 and 2023, to unpack the internal colonial roots of cotton production in southeast Turkey and its implications for the daily lives of its residents, particularly Kurdish and Arabic speaking. Despite being an ‘unruly habitat’ in light of its history of conflict between the Turkish nation-state and the PKK, and unsuitable environmental conditions for this crop, developmental state-led interventions through the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP from the Turkish acronym), such as the damming of the upper Euphrates-Tigris basin, deeply transformed the productive landscape of the region, which contributes the largest share of cotton production in the country for the domestic textile industry. In so doing, they have deeply transformed relations and activities of social reproduction as well, reordering people’s daily lives along intersecting gender, race and class status markers. The main argument is that the state is implicated in social reproduction through multiple arrangements that cross overlapping production and reproduction boundaries rooted in internal colonial objectives of nation-state building.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines NTFP reliance among tribes in Kerala as indicative of historical marginalization from timber wealth. Tracing unequal colonial-era timber relations, it argues exploitative dependencies persist despite policy changes, hindering indigenous welfare.

Paper long abstract:

This paper critically interrogates the multifaceted role of non-timber forest produce (NTFP) in the sustenance of indigenous (tribal) communities, with a specific focus on the Kattunaicker community in the state of Kerala, India. While the socio-economic significance of NTFP for forest dwellers is well-acknowledged, this research seeks to unveil an additional dimension – NTFP as an emblematic marker of exclusion from timber resources.

Exploring the historical backdrop, notably during the colonial era, timber, especially teak, emerged as a commodity of profound quality and quantity. The colonial exploitation of Indian forest resources, including the export of timber for both personal and commercial gains, notably impacted tribal communities. This manifested through a dual process of geographical and policy-based exclusion, compelling these communities out of the forests to the fringes and subjecting them to economic marginalization.

Drawing on empirical evidence derived from Kerala, the study offers insights into the persistence of historical exploitative dependency relations pivoted in timber between the colonial state and its colony. This examination sheds light on the enduring marginalization of indigenous communities in contemporary times. This research enhances our comprehension of the intricate dynamics surrounding tribal dependence on NTFP and the corresponding absence of tribal reliance on timber, offering a nuanced perspective on this complex socio-economic indicator deeply rooted in historical exploitation. The enduring implications for Indigenous communities are carefully unraveled within this scholarly exploration.