Exploring numeracy trends in Africa and the Middle East, 1700 to 1970: How large was the colonial impact?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jörg Baten
• Subject Area: Economic and Social History
• Term: from 2018 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395416105

Math and science abilities are among the most crucial determinants of economic growth across countries, understanding their formation in the long run is therefore important in shedding light on development. Hence, exploring numeracy during early periods can provide insights into patterns of long-term development. Clearly long-term numerical trends in Africa and the Middle East are underexplored topics, from precolonial times and the Ottoman era to the second half of the 20th century. This project will fill the gap by digitizing new data and evaluating existing sources in order to reconstruct trends of numeracy using age-heaping techniques across African and Middle Eastern countries between c. 1700 and 1970. Age-heaping techniques have been successfully applied in a large number of countries, and many methodological challenges have been solved. But for Africa and the Middle East, only pilot studies on age-heaping exist so far. This period and region was chosen because it allows one to study the impact of colonialism on numerical development. There is substantial variation between different colonial government systems and independent governments (and their educational and other policies). This allows for a large-scale panel-econometric approach. Hence, the two main aims are to (1) reconstruct trends of numeracy for a substantial number of countries and (2) to assess the effects of colonialism, an important aspect of the joint history between Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. In addition to econometric studies, this project will also result in a number of case studies (on Somalia, Egypt and Liberia). Apart from journal publications in economics, we will also take an interdisciplinary perspective that will be interesting for an audience of historians and other researchers. Collecting new evidence, assessing selection biases carefully (i.e. not adhoc, but thoroughly) and geo-coding all evidence of numeracy in the Middle East and Africa will also provide new insights into global economic history. Based on this project, we will be able to give innovative answers to the main research questions, as well as to provide ground for other scholars to answer a myriad of other questions as well. Finally, understanding the economic history of Middle Eastern and African numerical development will also serve an important political function, as Germany currently receives a lot of immigrants from these countries (and predictably more will come in the future).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants