The Asante and the Pan-African Movement

This chapter explores neomercantilist ideas from late nineteenth-century West Africa and the early twentieth-century Pan-African movement. The West African case involved the ideas of some leaders of the Asante Empire, whose neomercantilist initiatives were subsequently stymied by British colonial conquest. The chapter then notes the emphasis on commercial protectionism and the nature of its engagement with foreign investment in line with Asante neomercantilism. In Pan-Africa, Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey developed a distinctive neomercantilism linked to the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) as an embryo for a future independent African state. Garvey's diasporic neomercantilism prioritized swadeshi-style economic activism to maximize the wealth and power of an African state-in-formation.