Other Cases: Nigeria and New Guinea

Two cases which lend themselves to the type of empirical investigation employed for Ghana cocoa are peasants’ exports from Nigeria and New Guinea. The point of contrast between these two cases which has influenced their selection, is the length of time each has been exposed to European contact. Like Ghana, Nigeria had traded with Europe first in slaves and later in palm produce, long before cocoa exports featured in the economy: At least two hundred years of trade and contact pre-date our period of enquiry. Imported consumer goods were presumably not the novelties for cocoa farmers which they might have been in societies of more recent contact. As in Ghana, Nigeria had in the pre-colonial era a significant internal trade in foodstuffs and simple manufactures and services, together with domestic currencies (cowries, iron and copper rods) and even an indigeous capital market.1 By way of contrast New Guinea, where cocoa and coffee exports date from the Second World War, is a society newly introduced to outside contact. The Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain which has been the location of studies by Salisbury and Epstein, was opened up to wider influences only a century ago in the 1870s, when German trading stations were established to purchase coconuts for processing into copra. In comparison with West Africa the society was at that stage relatively unsophisticated. Cannibalism was most certainly practised, and technology was extremely primitive — the main tools being stone axes and pointed sticks.