IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palscp/978-3-032-01086-5_7.html

Conclusion

Author

Listed:
  • Gijs Dreijer

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Abstract

This chapter concludes the book and takes stock of the period between 1846 and 1914 when the Dutch entrepreneurs from the city of Rotterdam participated in the Scramble for Africa’s resources. It argues that these men made a conscious entrepreneurial choice to move into West (Central) Africa in search of commodities like palm oil and, through dispersion, became relatively successful entrepreneurs, despite the many challenges posed by the Partition of Africa and the expansion of European imperial states across the African continent. Overall, the book demonstrates that (1) doing business in the ‘empire of others’ brought opportunities but also posed major challenges and (2) historians should take into account the entrepreneurial agency of actors from purportedly ‘smaller’ countries when analysing imperialism in Africa as well as imperialism more broadly. Finally, the chapter shortly applies these lessons to ideas of a ‘New Scramble for Africa’, which has gained currency in societal debate in recent years.

Suggested Citation

  • Gijs Dreijer, 2026. "Conclusion," Palgrave Studies in Economic History,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-032-01086-5_7
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-01086-5_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-032-01086-5_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.