I am relying here, with some modifications, on bold estimates by Paul Bairoch,
"Ecarts internationaux des niveaux de vie avant la Révolution industrielle," Annales:
économies, sociétés, civilisations, 34,1 (Jan.-Feb. 1979), 145-71. If one calculates in real
terms (PPP), the range in GDP (gross domestic product) is given in Human Devel
opment Report 1996 as 80:1. Ram, "Tropics and Human Development," p. 1.
CHAPTER 1
One thing for the French school: they were very sure of themselves. Thus Edmond
Demolins, back around the turn of the century: "If the history of mankind were to
begin over, without any change in the world's surface, it would broadly repeat it
self—Comment la route crée le type social (Paris, n.d.), I, ix. For a skeptical view of this
European interest in geography—decried as training for colonialism—see Blaut, The
Colonizer's Model, p. 45, n. 3.
See Andrew Kamarck, The Tropics and Economic Development.
Cf. Arnold Guyot, The Earth and Man (1849; reprinted 1897), p. 251. Also Liv
ingstone, "The Moral Discourse of Climate," p. 414.
On this story, see Smith, "Academic War," pp. 155, 162; also S. B. Cohen, "Re
flections on the Elimination of Geography," p. 148.
So it is easier, and no doubt more practical (though not for what I am trying to do),
to confine discussions of African agriculture to what can and cannot be done in cir
cumstances such as they are. Cf. R P. Moss, "Environmental Constraints." For a more
