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The long term impact of European Settlement within former French West Africa Did Prosperous Areas Fall Behind ?

Did colonisation change the distribution of prosperity within French-speaking West Africa? Using a new database on both pre-colonial and colonial contexts, this paper shows that some of West African best performing pre-colonial areas lost their advantage because of colonial experience. Politics are the mechanism at work: pre-colonial prosperity encouraged hostility towards colonial power which dissuaded European from settling. Since European settlement in colonial era had a strong positive impact on current outcomes, early political hostility toward colonial power had a persistent negative impact on development path. Nevertheless, there is no complete “reversal of fortune” since more hostile areas were also more prosperous, and prosperity per se was an attractive factor for European settlement. Rich and hostile areas therefore did not receive less European settlers in absolute terms but they received less European settlers than they would have received had they not been so hostile. As a consequence, some less prosperous but also less hostile pre-colonial areas caught up and became the new leaders within French-speaking West Africa.