This volume gathers contributors across a wide range of disciplines to explore the relationship between the environment, economics, and development in Nigeria from the twentieth century to the present, examining issues such as violence, health, and contemporary concerns about sustainability and conservation. It sheds light not just on the environmental history of Nigeria - a crucial, paradigmatic case in its own right - but also offers insights into these issues as they manifest themselves throughout the developing world.

This book engages in the long-standing debate on the relationship between capitalism and colonialism. Specifically, Rönnbäck and Broberg study the interaction between imperialist policies, colonial institutions and financial markets. Their primary method of analysis is examining micro- and macro-level data relating to a large sample of ventures operating in Africa and traded on the London Stock Exchange between 1869 and 1969. Their study shows that the relationship between capital and colonialism was highly complex. While return from investing in African colonies on average was not extraordinary, there were certainly many occasions when investors enjoyed high return due to various forms of exploitation. While there were actors with rational calculations and deliberate strategies, there was also an important element of chance in determining the return on investment – not least in the mining sector, which overall was the most important business for investment in African ventures during this period. This book finally also demonstrates that the different paths of decolonization in Africa had very diverse effects for investors.

For most of the twentieth century tin was fundamental for both warfare and welfare. The importance of tin is most powerfully represented by the tin can - an invention which created a revolution in food preservation and helped feed both the armies of the great powers and the masses of the new urban society. The trouble with tin was that economically viable deposits of the metal could only be found in a few regions of the world, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, while the main centers of consumption were in the industrialized north. The tin trade was therefore a highly politically charged economy in which states and private enterprise competed and cooperated to assert control over deposits, smelters and markets. Tin provides a particularly telling illustration of how the interactions of business and governments shape the evolution of the global economic trade; the tin industry has experienced extensive state intervention during times of war, encompasses intense competition and cartelization, and has seen industry centers both thrive and fail in the wake of decolonization. The history of the international tin industry reveals the complex interactions and interdependencies between local actors and international networks, decolonization and globalization, as well as government foreign policies and entrepreneurial tactics. By highlighting the global struggles for control and the constantly shifting economic, geographical and political constellations within one specific industry, this collection of essays brings the state back into business history, and the firm into the history of international relations.

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

Combined together in three volumes are the authors writings on labour and employments relations in Nigeria spanning over three and a half decades. Volume one covers the Nigerian industrial relations industrial relations institutional and legal framework, trade unions and trade unionism, wage bargains and conflict relations.

Created as a result of British colonialism, Nigeria emerged as a nation-state during the mid-20th century. Toyin Falola presents statistical data on Nigeria's economy that illustrate the nature of the changes made throughout the mid-20th century.

Nigeria, once a resourceful regional power, has been caught in a spiral of economic and political decay. This once-promising nation is now seen as an international pariah, partly as a result of the gross human rights violations of its government, but largely because of the failure to generate a political leadership capable of containing and reversing rather than aggravating the process of decline. Union Power in the Nigerian Textile Industry covers developments in Nigeria during two trying decades of deepening economic and political crisis. It is not, however, an additional tale of decay. It highlights the remarkable progress which has been achieved, in spite of this decline, in industrial adjustment, institution building, and conflict regulation. Gunilla Andrae and Bjorn Beckman follow Nigeria's leading manufacturing sector, the textile industry, from the heyday of the oil boom through successive phases of adjustment and liberalization, suggesting that industrialization is still very much on the African agenda. The focus is on the trade unions, their role in industrial restructuring and their ability to defend workers' interests and rights. Union Power in the Nigerian Textile Industry examines the successful institutionalization of a union-based labor regime, defying global trends to the contrary. The authors explore the origins of union power in the national and local political economy, pointing to the mediation between the militant self-organization of the workers and the strategies of state and capital. They draw on extensive field work, interviews with managers, unionists and workers, and massive documentation from internal union sources.

This 1989 book examines the experience of British business in Asia since 1860, with primary focus on the impact of British commerce in the region. Following an introduction by the editors, there are essays by leading specialist historians on British businesses in Iran, India, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Russian Asia and Japan.

This collections of papers, from twenty-seven chapters is on aspects of reforms and labour and employment relations in Nigeria over the past three decades.