How Africans Shaped British Colonial Institutions: Evidence from Local Taxation
利用1948年尼日利亚、黄金海岸、尼亚萨兰和肯尼亚四个殖民地的地方政府税收数据，比较了英国间接统治下非洲制度的差异，发现非洲精英与殖民政府的关系及经济不平等影响了制度能力，表明非洲人对殖民制度的塑造作用比通常认为的更大。
The institutions that governed most of the rural population in British colonial Africa have been neglected in the literature on colonialism. We use new data on local governments, or “Native Authorities,” to present the first quantitative comparison of African institutions under indirect rule in four colonies in 1948: Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Nyasaland, and Kenya. Tax data show that Native Authorities’ capacity varied within and between colonies, due to both underlying economic inequalities and African elites’ relations with the colonial government. Our findings suggest that Africans had a bigger hand in shaping British colonial institutions than often acknowledged.