Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa

Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary collection brings together recent scholarship on the social history of agrarian change in Africa. It provides an important entry into the lived experiences of millions of Africans who cultivated cotton, often under duress, during the colonial period. The social history of cotton in Africa thus provides an opportunity to take a constant in the changing worlds of colonialism - cotton - and to explore a range of African experiences historically and geographically.