The Revival of African Economic History in the 21st Century: A Bibliometric Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/rhiihr.47560Keywords:
African economic history, bibliometric analysis, top journals in economic hisotry, citational success, authorshipAbstract
Ten years have passed since the publication of the last special issue on African economic history proclaiming the “renaissance” of the field. We carry out a bibliometric analysis of 114 articles written by 104 distinct authors and published in the leading five economic history journals from 2000 to 2024. We derive an updated outline of the key features of the evolution of African economic history in terms of quantity and impact of publications, research topics, historical period, African geographical area, type of sources and data, analytical methods and author characteristics (affiliation and gender). The field has seen an impressive expansion in publication output and impact – also outside the main economic history outlets – as well as in conference participation, variety of research topics and innovation in the use of sources. However, immediately after the publication of the special issue in 2014, this revival plateaued in terms of absolute and relative publications as well as their citational performance. Authors based at African institutions and female authors remain underrepresented; former Belgian, German, Italian and Portuguese colonies, as well as the postcolonial period remain understudied.
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