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Quantitative Third-World Economic History

An interesting and diverse set of four presentations stimulated active discussion on a variety of topics in the economic history of less developed countries. Philip Curtin began the session by reporting on his recent work on "Africa and the Wider Monetary World, 1250-1850." Recent research indicates that while the African economy may not have been as monetized as its Asian and European counterparts, there was still a great deal of production that was distributed through market channels. There were three phases of monetary relations between Africa and the rest of the world. During the first phase from the eleventh or twelfth centuries until 1500 it appears that gold flowed out of Africa in return for copper. During the second phase from 1500 to 1850, European maritime contact altered the existing trade and monetary flow patterns. Finally in the third phase old currency systems were destroyed and replaced during the colonial period by systems based on the European monetary system. During the second phase there was a general rise in the level of monetization of the economy, a growth in the monetary use of cowrie shells and copper, and continued use of cloth as the apparently most prevalent medium of exchange. Gold appears to have flowed out of Africa except during the second half of the eighteenth century when high gold prices in Africa appear to have resulted from the increased use of gold as a store of value and medium of exchange for major transactions. Curtin presented evidence on a diverse and complicated set of trends in the use, price, and shipment of cowries, copper, gold, and silver. Important evidence on the monetary history of Africa is being accumulated. John Hanson focused his presentation on "Export Surpluses and Economic Development." Using data from the 1909 U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor study, The Statistical Abstract of Foreign Countries, he was able to construct a series on export surpluses and the flows of precious metals for 34 less-developed countries from the midnineteenth through the early-twentieth centuries. Hanson was attempting to test the assertion in the dependency-school literature that less developed countries consistently ran export surpluses. He found that 16 of his 34 countries did while 18 ran import surpluses. Cumulative export surpluses for the 16 ranged from 1 to 37 percent of cumulative exports and probably did not exceed 5 percent of national income. Hanson concluded that no general pattern emerges and that each country needs to be examined on a case by case basis. Some members of the audience commented that export surpluses were essentially payments for invisibles and the services of foreign factors of production, and questioned their importance or role in development. Others felt that Hanson had ignored the timing of the export surpluses, and had paid insufficient attention to overall and regional trade relations and their effects on development, and thus had not really tested the dependency-school hypothesis. Some suggested that if the size of the cumulative export surpluses were compared with the value of aggregate savings rather than national income, their burden would have appeared to have been more significant. Dan Doeppers presented evidence on occupational mobility among Filipinos in Manila in the 1900-1941 period. The study is part of a larger one on social dynamics and mobility and the role of the middle class in colonial export economies. Doeppers found that upward mobility was rapid during export boom periods, that voluntary turnover rates in the government bureaucracy were inversely related to real government salaries and positively related to private employment opportunities, and that the American policy of Filipinization of the bureaucracy greatly favored the cohort who joined the