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The population of a country in which commodity economy is poorly developed (or not developed at all) is almost exclusively agricultural. This, however, must not be understood as meaning that the population is engaged solely in agriculture: it only means that the population, while engaged in agriculture, itself processes the products of agriculture, and that exchange and the division of labor are almost non-existent. The traditional organization of farming Any discussion of modem developments in West African agriculture should begin and end with the rural division of labor that constitutes the social context of productive strategies. This chapter begins with a brief recapitulation of traditional economic structure in areas marked either by a complex structure of commodity production or by a simple division of labor. After a detailed examination of forest and savannah agriculture in the modern period and a more cursory look at the use of livestock, the chapter concludes with an assessment of the effects of these developments on the rural division of labor as a whole. As we have seen, traditional agriculture was carried out within the framework of a wider division of labor, which was developed to a high degree in some places, notably in the savannah civilizations around the Niger and Senegal rivers. The division of labor was less developed in the intermediate belt and in the forest away from the coast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Included in Gregory King's many calculations made during the final decade of the seventeenth century are his estimates of the future population of England. He expected the population of the country to grow from 5.5 million in 1700, to 6.42 million by 1800, and to 7.35 million by 1900. In fact, as Figure 3.1 and Table 3.5(a) indicate, the population of England stood at 8.66 million in 1801 and 30 million in 1901. His forecast for the maximum population of the country was around 11 million people, which he did not expect to be reached until the year 3500 (in fact it was achieved by 1820). King's projections were so wide of the mark because he thought the country had insufficient land to support more people. His assumption was that, with a finite area of land and an agricultural technology that was virtually static, anything other than a very gradual growth in population was impossible. This assumption was based on a lesson from history. Before the mid-eighteenth century English population seemed to have a natural ceiling of around 5.5 million people. Whenever population grew (during the Roman occupation, in the thirteenth century, and again in the sixteenth century) agriculture had the greatest difficulty in meeting the increased demand for food. In each case there appears to have been a check: the rise in population was halted because the increase in agricultural output was insufficient to sustain the rise in population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]