ABSTRACT
The collapse of the post-war boom in 1920 stripped the West African market of its weaker traders and revealed the true nature of its structure: the domination of trade by a half dozen or so European import-export houses. The Lebanese who gained control of the bulk of the retail trade from the Europeans and Africans, and likewise the purchase of the peasant’s export crops, first arrived in West Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. The Lebanese formed the most important single expatriate group in West Africa other than nationals of the colonial powers. The Lebanese had a number of advantages over their European competitors, the main one being the comparative lowness of their costs. The Lebanese were despised as a community by the Europeans, and hated by Africans as competitors who had taken trade from them they felt should have been theirs.
