My work focuses on the economic and financial history of sub-Saharan Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on Africa’s global connnections. My first book, Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2012) uses taxation and public spending as a lens to view changing economic and political links between colonial administrations, the people they governed, and metropolitan institutions. More recently, I have published several papers examining the relationship between African countries and international financial and monetary systems. I am currently working on my second monograph, an economic history of Liberia which examines the exercise of economic sovereignty by Liberian elites in comparative perspective.  

Teaching 2019-20

EH211  Africa and the World Economy, 1500-2000

EH401 Historical Analysis of Economic Change

EH413  African Economic Development in Historical Perspective

EH421 Economic History of Colonialism

Selected publications

Please see list below.

Editorships

Editor, Economic History of Developing Regions 

Research Associate in African Economic History, University of Stellenbosch

Download Dr Gardner's CV here