This comprehensive economic history of pre-colonial Madagascar examines the island's role in the burgeoning international economy and the rise of modern European imperialism. It reveals that the Merina of the Central Highlands attempted to found an island empire and, through the exploitation of its human and natural resources, develop the economic and military might to challenge British and French pretensions in the region. Ultimately, their failure (due to imperial forced labor policies and natural disasters) caused the nefarious consequences, attributed to external capitalist and French...

Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. In this 1996 text, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences...