The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: Côte d'Ivoire, 1880-1995 by Thomas J. BassettReview by: Donna MaierCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 36, No. 3(2002), pp. 575-577Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4107339 .

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Reviews / Comptes rendus 575

deposit in university libraries where the next generation of lawyers and arbitrators will be trained.

These issues, which are matters of will and procedure rather than law, must be addressed if international commercial arbitration is to gain legiti- macy and support in Africa. For the West, the price of not recognizing Africa's complaints is incalculable. In light of their historic encounters with the imperialist and colonialist West, African states have taken a considerable gamble on the new system. They have not forgotten their own bitter heritage of colonialism, and they are aware of the acrimonious history of imposed arbitration on the countries of Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century, which has led them to remain aloof. Africa must be met at least half way or African participation in the new interna- tional arbitration regime may be foreclosed. The legal regimes facilitated by ICSID and OHADA are in place. The West must illustrate its faith in the system by admitting Africa to full and effective membership in the

process. It is now evident that in domestic law, arbitration, mediation, concil-

iation, and the crafting of agreements by the parties themselves comprise a new legal regime of alternate dispute resolution. Internationally, arbitra- tion holds out the prospect of mutually positive benefits to parties in conflict who can shape their own settlements, and it offers an example to others states, agencies, and individuals who might follow suit.

Christopher English Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's, Newfoundland

Thomas J. Bassett. The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: C6te d'7voire, 1880-1995. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 243 pp.

Although before World War I small amounts of cotton were exported to

Europe from Cote d'Ivoire, these had dwindled to nothing by 1919. Yet by 1965, 15 000 tons of export cotton were produced, rising to 365 000 tons in 1999. All of it was grown by tens of thousands of individual "peasant" farmers, with family labour, hoes and ox ploughs, living in northern Cote d'Ivoire. Thomas Bassett defines this production explosion as a "peasant cotton revolution," which he comprehensively documents and analyses in his book of the same title.

Bassett begins his study with a concise survey of the nineteenth-

century political, demographic, and ecological changes wrought by the French, Tieba, and Samori empires colliding in northern C6te d'Ivoire. His

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576 CJAS / RCEA 36:3 2002oo

geographical history also reviews current knowledge about the early pres- ence and diversity of cotton species in Africa, plants well established long before European arrival. Bassett proceeds to examine post-1919 French colonial policies, which sought to boost cotton production for a metropole viewed as overly dependent on the fluctuating world market. Observing that colonial officials frequently reversed strategies and pursued contra- dictory goals, he demonstrates how they futilely attempted to reconcile free trade principles with centralized planning, recruitment of workers for the south with demands for cotton labourers in the north, and production coercion with feeble market incentives. Ultimately colonial policies yielded tepid results for cotton production, primarily because government- set producer prices were never as high as those offered by Jula merchants buying in the parallel indigenous cotton market for traditional spinners and weavers.

The early independence period to the mid-1980s forms the central body of Bassett's research and narrative. Cotton production then increased by more than five hundred percent through greater yields, larger cultivated areas, and increasing numbers of farmers choosing the crop. Bassett identi- fies the key stimulants: in the 1950s the French government and private textile interests funded a parastatal, CFDT (French Company for the Development of Textiles Fibers), to research improved cotton varieties for West Africa. In 1962 CFDT was able to negotiate a vertically-integrated monopsony with the independent C te d'Ivoire government of which earlier colonial officials could only have dreamed. CFDT introduced a new high-yielding cotton and simultaneously advanced farmers the necessary seed, pesticides, and fertilizers in exchange for exclusive buying and ginning rights. Producers received well below world market prices for their crop, which was sold by CFDT through the Cote d'Ivoire state marketing board. The difference between world price and producer price, after reim- bursements to CFDT, was deposited in the Ivoirian treasury, to finance investment projects and parastatals whose managers were linked to politi- cal patronage. Bassett admits to uncertainty about why farmers continued to produce at all, given the wealth extraction and supervision they endured, but the advantages of access to new technologies and credit comprised a rational choice.

One of the greatest strengths of this book is its consistency and depth of data spanning almost fifty years of CFDT production and costs, and twenty years of Bassett's rich field research. His household surveys of wealth and labour distribution within the traditional farming calendar document a changing economic and social environment. He observed a "revolt" of poro (Senufo initiation society) workers marking the end of lineage-based labour in the 1970s, the adoption of ox ploughs by wealthier households in the 1980s, and an increase in husband's demand for wives'

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Reviews / Comptes rendus 577

labour in the 1990s. This latter confirms what researchers find almost universally, that the adoption of plough technology displaces and re- marginalizes women farmers. One of Bassett's themes, however, is that Ivoirian (male) farmers were active agents in choosing and structuring new time, labour, technology, and social inputs in order to maximize produc- tion of a cash crop on their fields in a region of low population density and labour shortage.

Bassett's analysis of the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) is less complete. While initially the end of seed and herbi- cide subsidies, and currency devaluation, hurt farmer incomes, the dismantling of CFDT's monopsony, privatization of gins, political liberal- ization which allowed farmer cooperatives to mushroom, and curtailment of the government's ability to skim the world / producer price gap, all stim- ulated a record-breaking production rebound in the late 1990s. Bassett hesitates to declare the farmer a winner, noting that producer prices were still well below world market prices. But by 1999, with eighty-five percent of cotton farmers represented by producer cooperatives lobbying for better terms, his field visits were beginning to uncover upbeat anecdotes and statistics.

Bassett's book is valuable agricultural history and has significance for African economic history, geography, rural development, and (rural) labour relations. He tends to portray development policy makers somewhat monolithically, as if they are all martinets who never listen or observe - a bit of an oversimplification that he does not support with much evidence. However, his book demonstrates that there are many complex paths to development, some which neither worker nor advisor can predict, and that African farmers have been far more engaged in their own development than most observers, including African politicians, have acknowledged.

Donna Maier University of Northern Iowa.

Martin Bernal. Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics. Edited by David Chioni Moore. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2001. 550 pp.

The publication of Martin Bernal's books Black Athena I and II in 1987 and 1991 set off debates which for the most part are anything but academic on the part of both his vehement critics and his adherents. To remain neutral has not actually been an option. Central to his work is his hypothesis that ancient Greek civilization, and therefore western civilization, had its

origin in Africa (ancient Egypt), and southwest Asia. This historical fact,

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