Quantitative Pillar
In the construction of CASP, we make abundant use of primary data sources. These include mainly official publications, such as statistical yearbooks which contain information on a broad range of topics. Other documents, such as governmental expenditure reports, cover more specific topics. These documents have been collected from a variety of archives including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, British Online Archives, Cambridge University Library, International Labour Organization Library, Hathi Trust, LeibnizInformationszentrum Wirtschaft (ZBW), and United Kingdom National Archives.
Historical research on social policy is often hindered by a lack of comparative data. This is especially true for low income countries, thus inhibiting both theoretical and empirical advances in related literature. With the construction of the Colonial Actors and Social Policy Dataset (CASP), we contribute to filling this gap. CASP provides information on British and French colonies in inter-war Africa (1919-39), with a focus on capturing variation in actor constellations and social policies across time and space. Besides our own analyses of the newly collected data, we hope CASP will provide a useful resource for researchers interested in the comparative-historical study of colonialism and social policy.