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Prelude to m’zungu colonisation of Africa

"Veni, Vidi,"

find robust empirical support for these predictions. We also examine the effects of maize

on economic growth and conflict, and find that it had little effect on either channel. Our
results suggest that rather than stimulating development, the introduction of maize

simply increased the supply of slaves from Africa during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.”

"Maize and Precolonial Africa." 40
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
Cherniwchan, Jevan, and Juan Moreno-Cruz.
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" The aim of this paper has been to provide a historical overview of the Columbian

Exchange, with a particular emphasis on aspects of the exchange that have generally
been neglected by economists. The New World provided soils that were very suitable for

the cultivation of a variety of Old World products, like sugar and coffee. The increased
supply lowered the prices of these products significantly, making them affordable to the
general population for the first time in history. The production of these products also

resulted in large inflows of profits back to Europe, which some have argued fuelled the
Industrial Revolution and the rise of Europe (Inikori, 2002; Acemoglu, Johnson, and

Robinson,2005). The Old World also gained access to new crops that were widely
adopted.

Potatoes were embraced by the Irish and the eastern European societies, chili peppers by

the cultures of South and Southeast Asia, tomatoes by Italy and other Mediterranean
societies, and tobacco by all nations of the world.

The exchange also had some extremely negative impacts. Native American populations

were decimated by Old World diseases. This depopulation along with the production of
valuable Old World crops like sugarcane and coffee, then fuelled the demand for labor
that gave rise to the transatlantic slave trade.

The result was the forced movement of over twelve million slaves from Africa to the
Americas and devastating political, social, and economic consequences for the African
continent. Following the slave trade, the African continent was divided and brought under

European colonial rule, an event that some have argued would have been impossible
without the discovery of quinine in the New World. Moreover, the knowledge of how to

harvest and process rubber, learned from natives of the Andes, had particularly
regrettable consequences for those in Africa's Congo region.”

"The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas." 41
Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 2 (May 2010)
Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian.