Category: Economic History

Walter Rodney鈥檚 Lost Book:聽One Hundred Years of Development in Africa

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By Leo Zeilig.

One of the most astonishing books that Walter Rodney 鈥� the Guyanese revolutionary and historian 鈥� ever wrote was published several years after he was assassinated on 13 June 1980. The story of this book and how it came to be published is almost as remarkable as the life of the revolutionary himself. In 1978, Rodney was working as a full-time activist of the Working People鈥檚 Alliance (WPA) in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. The WPA was a revolutionary organisation seeking to unite the African and Indian working class in the highly divided country, then run by the brutal Forbes Burnham. Rodney was the group鈥檚 principal organiser and intellectual, and to support himself and his family, and to fundraise for the WPA, he travelled overseas to teach and work.

One trip to Germany in 1978 shows us how his last book came to be. Rodney travelled from Guyana to Hamburg in April of that year. He was already the celebrated and outspoken author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and his arrival was eagerly anticipated. He had been invited by the radical German scholar, Rainer Tetzlaff, to teach a course on the history of African development at the University of Hamburg.

The lecture course Rodney was employed to teach was titled, 鈥楢frican Development, 1878-1978鈥�, and comprised, according to the one-page programme, 鈥�(i) a brief introduction to development concepts; (ii) a survey of African colonial economies with special reference to East and West Africa; and (iii) an examination of post-colonial developments in Kenya and Tanzania.鈥� According to the brief programme there were going to be twelve lectures, comprising, 鈥楾he debate on development concepts in Africa鈥� and 鈥楶ost-colonial development strategies鈥�.1

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National Fiscal Redistribution as 鈥淚nternational鈥� Development Assistance

Abel B.S. Gaiya2 Comments

The histories of international development and foreign aid often focus on aid between independent nations. Williams鈥� (2013: 234) history of international development aid only begins from the British Colonial Development Act of 1929. Markovits, Strange and Tingley鈥檚 (2019) history of foreign aid focuses on aid between 鈥渘ations鈥� or empires. Helleiner (2014), for instance, traces the origins of multilateral development finance proposals to China鈥檚 Sun Yat-sen in 1919.

There is, however, a major problem with these histories. Their starting points reveal a methodological nationalist approach. The history of states and societies since the modern era, is however more complex. The early modern era is well known for the spate of state consolidations and national formations. It may be argued that intra-national transfers within modernizing nations may represent important forms of regional development assistance that have been left out of the consideration of the history of development assistance.

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What You Exported Matters: Persistence in Productive Capabilities across Two Eras of Globalization

isabellamweber2 Comments
This blog was first published on the Rebuilding Macroeconomics .

By Isabella Weber, Tom Westland and Maya McCollum

鈥淭he inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep鈥︹�� This was how John Maynard Keynes described the globalisation of the Belle Epoque before the First World War. London, and by extension Britain, was at the centre of the world economy: not just a global manufacturing powerhouse, but also the ruler of a vast colonial domain upon which the sun famously never set. The global division of labour was stark: Britain and other Western nations largely produced manufactured goods. But they also exported a whole range of temperate agricultural goods like wheat, beef and barley. Elsewhere in the European colonial empires, products like cotton, cocoa and coffee were exported, often at very low prices and sometimes with forced labour, to sate a growing demand in the global economic core for tropical luxuries. 

More than a century has passed since World War I heralded the collapse of this world order. Today, another globalization wave that has shaped the world since the 1980s is ebbing. The question we ask in our ESRC Rebuilding Macroeconomics project is simple: what is the legacy of the First Globalization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the economic fortunes of countries during the Second Globalization? Or in other words, to what extent have countries鈥� positions in the international economic order been persistent across the two globalizations with some trapped at the bottom and others floating on top?

To answer this question, we have assembled a large new database of global commodity exports from 1897-1906. We exploit the fact that this period was the high point of colonial trade statistics and use a large variety of primary sources in five languages. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the most ambitious census of world trade for the previous globalization to date. This allows us to investigate the long-term wealth of nations in ways that aren鈥檛 possible with GDP data. The latter is sparse and unreliable for large parts of the world before the Second World War.

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What is at Stake in the Study of Settler Colonialism?

saienglert3 Comments

Settler colonialism, those colonial processes based on the aim of permanently settling metropolitan populations on indigenous lands, and 鈥� crucially 鈥� the struggle against it, have been at the centre of many of the key political developments of the last three decades. Starting with the movements of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and the first Palestinian intifada, indigenous resistance against settler colonial rule have played a central role in the reconstruction of progressive and revolutionary politics in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent ideological crisis it generated. 

More recently, indigenous movements against land expropriation and pipeline construction in North America, the intensification of settler colonial policies in Kashmir, and the coup against the MAS government of Evo Morales in Bolivia 鈥� to name but a few 鈥� continue to point to the central place these processes occupy in contemporary political struggles. They also illustrate powerfully the centrality of settler colonial dispossession in global strategies of capital accumulation and class rule. Far from being a historical issue, albeit one with present-day consequences, settler colonialism is a key aspect of contemporary capitalism. 

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The local state origins of national economic development

milfordbateman4 Comments

Korea_busan_pusan_harbour_cargo_container_terminal.jpegDuring the high period of global neoliberalism (1980-2008) the international development community essentially banned the heterodox concept of the ‘developmental state’ from polite discussion. One of the reactions to the global financial crisis and the Great Recession that ensued after 2008, however, was a growing call for the of the developmental state model. Most attention in this revival of interest has predictably followed the line that began with on Japan鈥檚 developmental state; which is to say that has overwhelmingly centred on the purpose and role of national-level developmental state institutions. This discussion is somewhat incomplete, I would argue, if not a little misleading. This is because a great part of the historic economic development success attributed to the 鈥榯op down鈥� developmental state model since 1945 is actually success brought about thanks to the innovative and determined activities of sub-national 鈥榖辞迟迟辞尘-耻辫鈥� developmental state institutions, which we can term the 鈥�鈥� (LDS) model.聽Read More »

Should the African lion learn from the Asian tigers? A comparison of FDI-oriented industrial policy in Ethiopia, South Korea and Taiwan

Jostein Hauge1 Comment

19095762104_2c72b2e569_o.jpg
The Huajian shoe factory in the Eastern Industrial Zone in Ethiopia. Photo: .

Ethiopia is being hailed as one of the most successful growth stories in Africa. Because of the country鈥檚 rapid economic growth, the high degree of state intervention in the economy, and the state鈥檚 focus on industrialization, people have started to compare Ethiopia to the Asian 鈥榯igers鈥� (; ; , ; ) 鈥� four countries in East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) that underwent rapid industrialization and maintained exceptionally high growth rates in the post-WWII era.

However, this emerging literature on Ethiopia-Asia comparisons has not yet sufficiently addressed one of the most important aspects of Ethiopia鈥檚 industrialization strategy 鈥� the attraction of foreign direct investments (FDI) into the manufacturing sector.

The rationale of my was this gap in the literature. In it, I ask the question: Should the African lion learn from the Asian tigers with respect to FDI-oriented industrial policy?聽

In short, my answer is yes. While Ethiopia鈥檚 policies are bringing about short-term economic success and showing promise for further industrialization, the state could arguably bargain harder with foreign investors, like it did in South Korea and Taiwan.Read More »

If India gave minimum support incomes to the rich before, it can do the same for the poor. Rahul Gandhi can do it.

Rishabh KumarLeave a comment

rahulghandi.jpgIndia鈥檚 opposition leader has recently floated聽minimum income support. The 1.5% GDP equivalent it requires can be financed through a 3% tax on the richest 3000. It is not just an idealized safety net for the poor 鈥� it has been done before, for the super elites. If it works, it can be a model for adoption in other emerging democracies. Read More »

Neoliberalism or Neocolonialism? Evaluating Neoliberalism as a Policy Prescription for Convergence

Rahul Menon6 Comments

Melton_Prior_-_Illustrated_London_News_-_The_Transvaal_War_-_General_Sir_George_Colley_at_the_Battle_of_Majuba_Mountain_Just_Before_He_Was_Killed.jpgBradford deLong has recently argued that neoliberalism provides a way for former colonies to close the gaps with their erstwhile colonial masters. But this argument ignores the fact that several economic policies of colonial times were explicitly laissez-faire in nature.

The recognition of the dangers of allowing finance a free hand in the economy has led to a rethink of the soundness of neoliberalism as an economic and policy doctrine, from . has attacked the theoretical foundations of neoliberalism itself, judging that its insistence on allowing for unhindered market activity is bad economics itself, for economic models that make a theoretical case for markets cannot be easily transplanted into the real world in the way that advocates of neoliberalism believe.

Yet this is not to say that the concept is dead and buried. As Harvey (2007) points out, neoliberalism is a political economic process that ostensibly seeks to organise society and economies around the principle of free market activity, while primarily attempting to shift the balance of power towards dominant economic classes that control capital. Seen in this light, neoliberalism is still a powerful force shaping political and economic changes in much of the world today.

, first published in 1998 and re-published now shows that the term 鈥渘eoliberalism鈥� still carries intellectual currency. His is a curious argument; neoliberalism provides the only suitable path for countries of the developing world to close the gap with their former colonial powers. Access to the latest goods and technology allows developing economies 鈥� with low levels of productivity 鈥� to boost productivity and output growth, and consequently incomes. The reason the State should stay away from the economic sphere in the developing world is because democratic institutions have not been established yet, and hence the political sphere is vulnerable to capture by elites.Read More »