A recent edited work which covers pre-colonial to contemporary
economic problems in relation to the West is *Money Matters:
Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West
African Communities*, ed. Jane Guyer. Then there is of course Philip
Curtin's *Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa* (1975) and George
Brooks' *Landlords and Strangers* (1993). An older classic study
which began an important debate in economic anthropology is Karl
Polyani's *Dahomey and the Slave Trade* (1966).