Living standards on the pre-colonial Gold Coast: a quantitative estimate of African laborers’ welfare ratios

This paper is an attempt to estimate living standards on the pre-colonial Gold Coast (in current-day Ghana) quantitatively, looking at the welfare ratios of indigenous laborers – in particular canoemen – working for the British Royal African Company in the early eighteenth century. This is the first time such a study has been undertaken for an indigenous population in any part and period of pre-colonial Africa. The data indicate that living standards were at least on a par with those in many other parts of the world, including large parts of Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe. No large gap in material affluence between the Gold Coast of West Africa and most of the rest of the world seems to have developed by this time.