Rooted in Exploitation

Why did nearly a century of efforts to develop the oil palm sector inDahomey/Benin not make its producers wealthy? To answer this question,Rooted in Exploitation traces the history of oil palm development fromthe late nineteenth century through colonial rule, independence, and thenegotiation of structural adjustment programmes in the 1990s. The bookargues that oil palm development, under both colonial and postcolonialrule, depended on exploitation, defi ned as the appropriation of labourand goods at below-market prices. The forms and intensity of exploitationchanged across successive political and economic contexts. Precisely becauseexploitation was continually reconfi gured, it provides an analytical tool foridentifying breaks and continuities in this long history of development.Drawing on extensive new archival research, the book brings togethersocial, agricultural, environmental, economic and global history to offer anintegrated and multi-actor account of development. By following a singlecommodity over more than a century, Rooted in Exploitation asks whobenefi ted from development, who bore its costs, and how changing politicaland economic regimes transformed the terms of exploitation.