The European Introduction of Crops into West Africa in Precolonial Times

Abstract

Historians of West Africa seem generally to agree that the main benefit conferred on the region by early European visitors, particularly the Portuguese, was the introduction of new crops. These crops are said to have improved diets and accelerated population growth, to the point, some would argue, that human losses through the slave trade were more than offset by the enhanced ability to feed people. Usually a few crops are cited, and the subject is not pursued very far, even in economic history texts, though the societies under study were overwhelmingly agricultural. Usually, too, American crops are singled out—especially maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, but also tobacco, pineapples, guavas, and papayas. Sometimes these are the only crops credited to Europeans. That list occasionally includes tomatoes and avocados even though no evidence has been advanced that either plant was grown in West Africa before the nineteenth century. Some historians confuse origin with source, stating, for example, that the Portuguese brought citrus fruit and sugar cane from Asia when those Asian crops had long been established in the Mediterranean region. No one, it appears, has taken the trouble to examine all the printed sources for precolonial West Africa, plus relevant linguistic evidence, to try to determine which crops were introduced by Europeans, whence, where, and when.