But Côted’Ivoire also suffered ill treatment, including a brutal campaign by the French to subdue the “interior”
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and impose forced labor. How do we understand this terrible colonial experience and its possible aftermath? Settler mortality was stunningly high in these two countries, each with an estimated 668 deaths per 1,000 per year, among the highest in the study of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (AJR); for comparison, the rate was just 15.5 in South Africa.* (Conclusions of research citied here are based on multi-country statistical analysis not on case studies; we are taking such research as a starting point for issues to consider when conducting more in-depth comparative case studies).