Poverty From The Wealth of Nations

In Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, M. Shahid Alam presents an analysis of the evolution of global disparities that goes beyond earlier neo-Marxist critiques, both in its conception and the marshalling of evidence. He moves beyond their narrative by inserting two additional asymmetries into the global economy-those created by 'unequal races' and 'unequal states'. The author demonstrates that global disparities emerged only after 1800; that the concentration of manufacturers, capital and technology in the advanced countries was not the result of market forces alone; that once the advanced countries had the military power, they used it to colonize lagging countries, to extract rents from them and acquire exclusive control over their markets. Lagging countries in Europe and the Americas, however, escaped colonization because of their racial and cultural affinities with Europe. In two core chapters, the author constructs a four-fold taxonomy of sovereignty (sovereign countries, dependencies, quasi-colonies and colonies) and uses cross-country data to show that loss of sovereignty promoted integration, and retarded manufactures, human capital formation and economic growth.