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ness. 1/ In most instances, the economic opportunity was the dynamic develop-

ment of new markets in the colonizing (or imperial) home country for the

beverages, food and industrial raw materials which could be produced in the

colony. Some but not all of the rapid dynamic response in these cases can

be explained by the coercion of colonialists, or by the development of infra-

structure facilities by the colonial power or by a crop's promotion by

"chartered companies" and cartel-type agency houses.

 More recently, the idea of an economically inert peasantry has been

subjected to serious challenge. First, there are those economists led by

Professor Jones [1960] and Professor T. W. Schultz [1964], who find ample

evidence that subsistence farmers are economic men who do maximize in the

utilization of their available economic resources given the available technology.

Such farmers may be operating at low absolute levels of production but none-the-

less they are optimizing at the ceiling of the available technological

possibilities. This group argues that what is fundamentally lacking is improved

technology. The obvious solution under such circumstances is to give first

priority to the development of new technology to alter the production possibilities

available to the subsistence farmer. Sizeable investment in new technology, if

successful, would enable the subsistence farmer to apply his economizing skills

at a higher absolute level of production.

 Second, a large number of economists have been conducting rigorous

empirical research to determine whether or not such farmers respond to economic

incentives. Despite the varieties of empirical and analytical measures used



i Andrus, 1948; Furnivall, 1957; Hill, 1963; Myint, 1964; Berry, 1967;
McHale, 1967; Pfanner, 1969.