With his characteristic irresponsibility one list member, claiming to be an unrepentant Marxist, accused Robinson and Acemoglu of ignoring colonialism. Of course he paid no attention to the chapter devoted to it! But this should only be expected. >From the conclusion of the relevant chapter of Why Nations Fail: "...this failure [to industrialize] was due to their extractive institutions, either a consequence of the persistence of their absolutist regimes or because they lacked centralized states. But this chapter has also shown that in several instances the extractive institutions that underpinned the poverty of the nations were imposed, or at the very least further strengthened, by the same process that fueled economic growth: European commercial and colonial expansion. In fact, the profitability of European colonial empires was often built on the destruction of independent polities and indigenous economies around the world...The East India company looted local wealth...This exapnsion coincided with the massive contraction of the Indian textile industry...It initiated a long period of reversed development in India...The Atlantic slave trade repeated the same pattern in Africa..." p. 271-3 There are serious criticisms to make of this book in its emphasis on the rights not of labor but of frisky entrepreneurs to displace existing economic elites and to enjoy secure property rights , but caricature serves no good purpose. It only leads criticism astray. LR
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