Modern phylogenetic methods are increasingly being used to address questions about
macro-level patterns in cultural evolution. These methods can illuminate the unobservable …

To what extent did sub‐Saharan Africa's twentieth century schooling revolution benefit boys
and girls equally? Using census data and a cohort approach, we examine gender gaps in …

How did Christianity expand in Africa to become the continent's dominant religion? Using
annual panel census data on Christian missions from 1751 to 1932 in Ghana, and pre-1924 …

Refers to the export of enslaved Africans from the Atlantic coast of West Africa. The trade
began slowly during the 16th century after the arrival of Portuguese merchants on the coast …

The institutions that governed most of the rural population in British colonial Africa have
been neglected in the literature on colonialism. We use new data on local governments, or …

Conventional wisdom proposes deep historical roots for authoritarianism in Africa: either
colonial “decentralized despotism” or enduring structural features. We present a new …

The renaissance of African economic history in the past decade has opened up new
research avenues for studying the long‐term social and economic development of Africa. A …

The colonial legacy of African underdevelopment is widely debated but hard to document. In
this article, occupational statistics from Protestant marriage registers of historical Kampala …

Christian missions in colonial Africa have contributed significantly to the expansion of formal
education and thereby shaped the continent's long-term economic and political …

This study presents new evidence on the anthropometric development of 47 countries. Did
colonialism have an influence on the biological standard of living of Africans? We find that …