Colonial sectoral dependency: The case of forest-related trade between Germany and Cameroon since 1892

Inequality in who benefits from forests and forest lands in the Global South is a recurrent topic of forest governance. Forest-related commodities feature prominently in trade between the Global North and South, from the colonial period until today, and they remain a target of contemporary trade policy. Take, for instance, the EU's recent efforts to govern international timber and forest (land)-related trade through the EUDR. Yet, when today's trade policies are shaped and forests are governed, research rarely engages with its colonial legacies. In this paper, we argue that persistence of colonial trade patterns can still drive highly unequal trade outcomes today – with new agreements not breaking with these structures and dependencies. Combining historical trade data with qualitative archival sources, this paper explores from an economic perspective the enduring legacy of colonialism in global forest trade relations, through the historical evolution of forestry-related trade between Germany and Cameroon from 1892 to 2022. We aim to provide further nuance to the study of colonial legacies in bilateral trade and explore methodological alternatives. Drawing on dependency theory and historical institutionalism, we conceptualize colonial legacies as sector-specific path dependencies, particularly in industries shaped during colonial rule. We highlight the role of sectoral dependency in trade and provide methodological insight into combining longitudinal trade data with archival data to understand the institutional structures maintaining these dependencies. Our findings are consistent with a growing body of literature questioning whether commodity dependence alone can account for persistent trade inequalities between the Global North and South.