Happily, Nathan Nunn (my former student in Marx and comparative systems
courses) compensates for my embarrassment over the student who posted
from China (with the mysterious Marx quote; 'work for the world').
michael
On 29/04/2008 3:43 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
Boston Globe, April 20, 2008
OPINION/IDEAS
Shackled to the past
New research from a Harvard scholar suggests that Africa's economic
woes may have their roots in the slave trade.
By Francie Latour
TO SOME DEVELOPMENT economists, the world can be boiled down this
simply: There are rich countries that keep getting richer, and there
are poor countries that seem destined to grow poorer. And then, there
is Africa.
For every symptom of Africa's relentless underdevelopment, there is a
theory about its root causes. Colonialism, the Cold War, climate
change, ethnic warfare, the choking off of technology - they all rank
high on the list of ills and crimes perpetrated on this continent in
the last century. But underneath all those, many scholars have long
sensed that to answer the two most nagging questions about Africa -
How do we fix it? And how did it break? - you have to go much farther
back in time. All the way to African slavery.
Sensing it is one thing. Proving it is another. Could there be a
direct, quantifiable link between the African countries most ravaged
by slavery and those that are the most underdeveloped today? And if
there were such a link, could it be measured?
A young Harvard economist named Nathan Nunn believes there is, and
believes he has. In a study sure to stir controversy over the legacy
of the African slave trades, Nunn argues that the African countries
with the biggest slave exports are by and large the countries with the
lowest incomes now (based on per capita gross domestic product in
2000). That relationship, he contends, is no coincidence. One actually
helped to cause the other.
It's a sweeping, ambitious recasting of slavery's horrific commerce.
It is also a work of risky estimates and serious statistical
gymnastics. Somehow, Nunn had to account for some 17 million slaves by
their ethnic origins - a task some historians say can't accurately be
done, but that Nunn nonetheless undertook, mining slavery data
compiled over decades by other scholars. He also had to prove that his
findings of cause and effect weren't polluted by a long list of
variables that seem likely to have affected Africa's economies in the
last 600 years. Nunn, a 33-year-old assistant professor, didn't shy
away from this either, devising ways to control for everything from
climate to natural resources to geography to Islamic influence to a
country's particular brand of colonialism.
Bottom line, Nunn argues, if you were an African country that had the
most people sold into slavery between 1400 and 1900, then you are
likely one of the African countries holding the shortest end of the
economic stick today. Depending on whom you ask, it's a claim that is
either groundbreaking or wildly premature.
--
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Director, Programme in 'Transformative Practice and Human Development'
Centro Internacional Miranda, P.H.
Residencias Anauco Suites, Parque Central, final Av. Bolivar
Caracas, Venezuela
fax: 0212 5768274/0212 5777231
http//:centrointernacionalmiranda.gob.ve
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
