Dictating Development: How Europe Shaped the Global Periphery (review)

In a sweeping analysis of economic development outside of Europe during the second half of the twentieth century, Krieckhaus argues persuasively that international factors have weighed heavily on the economic fortunes of different countries. He systematically catalogs a wide array of international factors, from trade to ideological influences and foreign aid, but the book's primary target is European colonialism.

Krieckhaus argues that colonialism had a highly positive economic impact when it introduced a large number of European settlers into a colony, as in North America, or Australia and New Zealand. Otherwise, he argues, its economic effect was largely negative. In particular, he ascribes sub-Saharan Africa's economic woes during the second half of the twentieth century almost entirely to the nature of European colonialism, in particular because it failed to develop the human capital of the region while ruthlessly exploiting its economic resources. On the other hand, he credits East Asia's recent success to the fact that it had the good luck to be colonized by Japan instead. These arguments are advanced with the help of crossnational quantitative work, and illustrated with informative, if derivative, case studies of Mozambique, Korea, and Brazil. Brazil appears to serve the purpose of showing that Latin America's intermediate economic record is due to the fact that the region did not escape colonialism, like East Asia, but has had more time to recover from it than tropical Africa. Latin America also had more European settlers, though not so many as the real settler economies.

These historical patterns are too well established to contest. Nor will many contemporary readers view as particularly controversial the general proposition that international factors influence the economic prospects of today's developing countries. The book's ultimate contribution stands or falls on the quality of the evidence and arguments that it brings to bear on behalf of its thesis.

Despite much compelling analysis and an engaging presentation, Krieckhaus' approach evinces two main problems. First, because Krieckhaus wants to put all or most of the explanatory weight on the destructive force of colonial occupation, he makes little effort to explain the reasons why Europe colonized certain regions and not others, or why European settlers initially went to, say, New Zealand, but not the much closer Nigeria. European colonization decisions were not random; they were shaped by perceptions of how easy colonial occupation would be, and how wealthy the future colony would be. Tropical Africa was colonized late in large part because it was viewed as both inhospitable and not particularly wealthy.

Even if European colonialism did not promote the economic development of the region, Africa's comparatively poor economic performance cannot be entirely be blamed on colonialism, because it may simply not have had as high a potential for economic development as East Asia or Latin America. In the language of the social sciences, colonialism cannot really explain twentieth-century development because the decision to colonize and or to send settlers to the colony is itself endogenous to economic development.

Second, Krieckhaus often underestimates other factors that help to explain development patterns. He cites but largely neglects the recent literature arguing that geographical location helps to explain development patterns and that, for instance, tropical location has had a strong deterrent effect on development. More curiously for a political scientist, he downplays the role of indigenous state structures in shaping the development process. His case study of Korea denigrates the country's long-standing state traditions, and his chapter on Mozambique exaggerates the importance of the state structures found and destroyed by the Portuguese. Since Krieckhaus argues compellingly that political institutions have had a powerful effect on twentieth-century development, it is curious that he systematically downplays the similar impact of precolonial state structures.