ABSTRACT

Despite the widespread use of the British colonial Blue Books as a statistical source, there has been little investigation of their reliability. This article compares retail price reports in the Blue Books with annual averages constructed from weekly market reports published in four colonial African newspapers. It finds that the Blue Books can sometimes be an unreliable guide to staple prices, with the median error in the order of 25%, though some series are reasonably accurate and some are very inaccurate. Estimating annual averages was complicated by high price volatility and seasonality. In a simulation, the article shows that colonial officials would have usually needed to gather price quotations reasonably frequently in order to be likely to obtain accurate annual averages. A new effort to find non-official sources for prices, especially for staples, and for the early colonial period, would help to refine estimates of living standards and agricultural market dynamics in colonial Africa.

摘要

尽管英国殖民蓝皮书被广泛用作统计来源，但对其可靠性的调查却很少。本文将 Blue Books 中的零售价格报告与根据四家非洲殖民地报纸每周发布的市场报告构建的年度平均值进行比较。它发现蓝皮书有时可能是不可靠的主食价格指南，中值误差在 25% 左右，尽管有些系列相当准确，有些则非常不准确。由于高价格波动和季节性，估计年度平均值变得复杂。在模拟中，文章表明殖民地官员通常需要合理频繁地收集报价，以便有可能获得准确的年度平均值。寻找非官方价格来源的新努力，