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What drove the profitability of colonial firms?: Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920-74)

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  • Sam Jones
  • Peter Gibbon

Abstract

The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the annual financial records of Sena Sugar Estates in Portuguese East Africa (today's Mozambique) over the period 1920-74 to probe the contributions of forced labour and preferential trade arrangements to the performance of the firm.

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  • Sam Jones & Peter Gibbon, 2022. "What drove the profitability of colonial firms?: Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920-74)," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-70, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2022-70
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    Cited by:

    1. Henrique Barros & Rute Martins Caeiro & Sam Jones & Patricia Justino, 2024. "The legacy of coercive cotton cultivation in colonial Mozambique," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2024-12, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

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    Keywords

    Mozambique; Sugarcane; Forced labour; Trade preferences; Colonialism; Profitability;
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