The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa by Thomas J. Bas... - 9780521783132

The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West AfricaCte d'Ivoire, 18801995\nAuthor(s): Thomas J. Bassett\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521783132, 978-0521783132\nSynopsis\nThe literature of Africa is dominated by accounts of crisis and gloom. But Thomas Bassett, a distinguished American geographer well known in the field of development, tells an unusual story of the growth of the cotton economy of West Africa. One of the few long-running success stories in African development, change was brought about by tens of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers. While the introduction of new strains of cotton in French West Africa was in part a result of agronomic research by French scientists, supported by an unusually efficient marketing structure, this is not a case of triumphant top-down 'planification'. Employing the case of Cte d'Ivoire, Professor Bassett shows agricultural intensification to result fr.