1. 1I owe a special debt of gratitude to Prof. W. E. Minchinton of Exeter University who first suggested this article, and who enabled me to go to West Africa for a term as visiting lecturer in economic history at Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone, in 1966. He provided many of the references and much helpful advice during the preparation of this article. I am also most grateful to the Hayter Fund for a travel grant which enabled me to visit Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, and Senegal on my journey to and from Sierra Leone; and to Prof. J. D. Fage of Birmingham University who kindly commented on an earlier draft.
2. 2See below, pp.554 -5 .
3. 1Aspects of agriculture other than crop cultivation have been omitted. Livestock husbandry is of limited importance in West Africa because disease prevents the keeping of many animals in the forest zone, but there is a voluminous literature on land tenure, agrarian systems, and ethnology. Good modern studies (with useful bibliographies) areWilliam Allan , The African Husbandman (1965 ), and Daniel Biebuyck, ed.African Agrarian Systems(1963). See also the periodicalAfrican Abstracts, a Quarterly Review of Ethnographic, Social and Linguistic Studies appearing in Current Periodicalswhich has been published in London by the International African Institute since 1950. This supplies invaluable summaries in English of articles in foreign journals.
4. 2The most recent and comprehensive study of West Africa isW. B. Morgan, and J. C. Pugh , West Africa (1969 ). See also R. J. Harrison Church,West Africa: A Study of Environment and Man's Use of It(4th edn, 1963), which contains much basic agricultural history and does not neglect the French-speaking countries; F. J. Pedler,Economic Geography of West Africa(1955), for the former British colonies; Walter Fitzgerald,Africa, a Social, Economic and Political Geography(1934; 7th rev. edn, 1950), for a prewar view; and K. B. Dickson,A Historical Geography of Ghana(1969), the most recent general study of that country.
5. 1For early trade routes and centres of civilization seeJ. D. Fage , An Atlas of African History (1958 ), which also has many other useful maps.