No, your logic in regards to your fictional account was opaque.
Clarity is hard to achieve when one is (a) abstracting to the level of a continent (b) trying to address distant historical periods before we have good data for any region of the world, let alone Africa.
Speaking of living standards in pre-Industrial Europe, for example, is a tricky thing which involves a lot of guess work. The same is true for Africa. What is the standard of living in Europe? Do you include Eastern Europe? Only EU member nations? Only the Big 7? Are any of these representative? Sure, I can make these generalizations, but how useful are they? Sometimes it may be useful in a gross way. Other times not.
I gave you a goodly number of cites to some of the best works on African history, including Curtin from whom you can derive some idea of pre-Colonial conditions in various regions within the Continent. I frankly don’t have the time to do your research for you to extract a vast amount of data.
As noted above, living standards prior to modern data collection is not something one can easily compare, nor can one easily abstract across a continent. What are living standards now in Africa? Which part? Botswana or Mozambique? Morocco or Senegal? I invite you to look at the World Bank data.
How do we compare this with records from 200 years ago anywhere? It is hard. I can rely on early Portuguese and Dutch accounts of say pre-Colonial Benin, which record well-fed populaces with cities large enough to impress the European visitors both for their size and organization. How much does this tell me?
It’s hard to say, without cross-referencing between archaeological data which might allow estimates for population size over time, and their wealth as recorded by artefacts etc. Unfortunately this data is hard to come by. We need more work. We do find within the colonial record signs of population decline and impoverishment (e.g. Colonial Congo and Central Africa), abandonment of settlements etc.
That is why I said ‘appears’ and qualified my statements. To make categorical statements would indicate (1) a false certainty in the data (2) not allow that generalizing over the entire continent does not allow for the probability that some people in some areas have improved their standard of living. (e.g. Botswana)
No, not really, but I have a sense you are challenged in this area. You first have to lose your a priori assumptions and do some basic research. Your concepts about Africa show all the signs of having been formed from “popular knowledge” and not having been informed by good, solid research. True comparision require comparable data. A rough comparision based on the kind of data which pre-19th century data gives us (this goes for the entire world, with some exception of Britain and some areas of Western Europe) is tricky.
I would never read only one book, however I might start with Fage and then go to Curtin. Martin might be easier reading than either of the two. Davidson is the easiest read, but I will frankly say that he has a bad tendency to over-compensate for your kind of views and err in the opposite direction. I find this disappointing as it weakens what is otherwise a strong case.
