A Precolonial Paradox? Rethinking Political Centralization and Its Legacies

A paradox has emerged in the growing literature on the legacies of the precolonial past: areas home to precolonial centralized polities are associated with beneficial long-run outcomes in some studies, but harmful ones elsewhere. This article introduces an original dataset of precolonial African states in the nineteenth century to explain this seeming contradiction. By developing a typology of precolonial statehood, I show that there is no single legacy of the precolonial past. Rather, statehood only increases civil conflict where political power was highly concentrated in a polity. Where political authority was more diverse, conflict prevalence is lower. A largely inverse pattern holds for development outcomes. These findings, and the associated dataset, suggest promising new pathways for understanding not only the legacies of Africa’s precolonial past, but the study of comparative state-building, which has largely relegated the African experience to a single story.