Wealth

The history of economic thought in Africa tends to be foreshortened and too often imagined as reactive to the introduction of mercantilism and capitalism. The longue durée study of key economic concepts, such as wealth, uncovers by contrast a dynamic and complex history, in this case of conceptualising wealth and its implications that can be traced back over more than two millennia. The entanglement of social, political and emotional concepts with wealth opens up possibilities for revisiting notions of wealth elsewhere in the premodern and early modern world.