Read Colossus Online

Authors: Niall Ferguson

Tags: #History

Colossus (63 page)

84
. Ibid., p. 264.

85
. Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Views of a Changing World,” June 2003.

86
. Richard Burkholder, “Ousting Saddam Hussein ‘Was Worth Hardships,’ ” Gallup Web site:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/tb/goverpubli/20030923c.asp
.

87
. Ibid.

88
. Woodward,
Bush at War
, p. 220.

89
. Ibid., pp. 231, 237.

90
. Ignatieff,
Empire Lite
, p. 2.

91
. Etzioni, “Implications of American Anti-Terrorism Coalition,” p. 26.

92. Stewart Stogel, “Food Fight,”
Time
, May 3, 2003.

CHAPTER 5: THE CASE FOR LIBERAL EMPIRE

1
. Louis,
Imperialism at Bay
, p. 227.

2
. Ibid., p. 14.

3
. On the limits of sovereignty and the various models of partial sovereignty, including empire, see Krasner, “Troubled Societies.”

4
. Diamond, “Universal Democracy.”

5
. Townsend,
European Colonial Expansion
, p. 19.

6
. Despite his repeated demands for a “timetable” for decolonization, the time frame Roosevelt had in mind was always kept vague. He spoke of some South Asian colonies as being “ready for self-government in 20 years,” but Borneo he expected would need a century of trusteeship: ibid., pp. 157, 437.

7
. Louis,
Imperialism at Bay
, p. 175. See Jeffery, “Second World War,” p. 314.

8
. Louis and Robinson, “Imperialism of Decolonization.”

9
. The British never tired of pointing out these inconsistencies. They lost no opportunity to remind the Americans of their
de facto
imperial position in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It turned out, conveniently enough, that these lay “outside the scope of the trusteeship program”: Louis,
Imperialism at Bay
, p. 236. Later they referred to the preferential treatment accorded by Roosevelt to the Russian empire as the “salt water fallacy”: ibid., p. 570.

10
. Alesina et al., “Economic Integration and Political Disintegration,” pp. 1, 23.

11
. Diamond, “Promoting Real Reform in Africa.”

12
. Ibid., p. 11.

13
. They were Lesotho, Pakistan, Egypt, Botswana, Malaysia, Malta, Barbados, Cyprus, Israel, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada and, of course, the United States.

14
. Calculated from World Bank,
World Development Indicators
database.
Per capita
GDP is adjusted for purchasing power parity in current international dollars.

15
. Ibid. Income refers to gross national income
per capita
, Atlas method (current U.S. dollars), 2002.

16
. The exceptions are Bangladesh, Nepal, Laos, Cambodia, Kyrgyzia and Tajikistan: two former British colonies, two former French colonies and two former Russian colonies.

17
. Diamond, “Promoting Real Reform in Africa.”

18
. James Wolfensohn, “A Good ‘Pro-Poor’ Cancún Could Help Rich as Well,”
Financial Times
, September 8, 2003.

19
. Tobias Buck, Guy de Jonquiéres and Frances Williams, “Fischler’s New Era for Europe’s Farmers,”
Financial Times
, June 27, 2003. Cf. Runge, “Agrivation.”

20
. Diamond, “Promoting Real Reform in Africa,” p. 31; national income data from the World Bank.

21
. Sachs and Warner, “Economic Reform,” esp. p. 36. See also their “Fundamental Sources of Long-run Growth,” pp. 184–88.

22
. Chiswick and Hatton, “International Migration.”

23
. Rodrik, “Feasible Globalizations,” p. 19.

24
. Lucas, “Why Doesn’t Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?”

25
. Baldwin and Martin, “Two Waves of Globalization,” p. 20.

26
. Schularick, “Development Finance,” p. 20f, chart 2.

27
. Easterly,
Elusive Quest
, p. 58f.

28
. See, e.g., Sachs, “Tropical Underdevelopment.”

29
. See Acemoglu et al., “Colonial Origins” and the same authors’ “Reversal of Fortune.”

30
. Landes,
Wealth and Poverty of Nations
, p. 217f.

31
. Barro, “Determinants of Economic Growth.” The three others were the provision of secondary and higher education, the provision of health care and the promotion of birth control.

32
. North and Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment.”

33
. Ferguson,
Cash Nexus
. See also Sylla, “Shaping the U.S. Financial Sstem.”

34
. Lindert, “Voice and Growth.”

35
. “Zambia received $2 billion of aid in 1985 dollars since 1960. If all the aid had gone into investment, and investment had gone into growth, its
per capita
income would now be $20,000. In fact it is $600”: Easterly,
Elusive Quest
, p. 42.

36
. “Governments so often cause low growth [by creating] poor incentives for growth: high inflation, high black market premiums, high budget deficits, strongly negative real interest rates, restrictions on free trade, excessive red tape, and inadequate public services”: ibid., p. 239.

37
. According to one estimate, the private international assets of poor countries’ residents may amount to two trillion dollars, the equivalent of almost 40 percent of poor countries’ combined GDP in 2000: Schularick, “Development Finance,” p. 32.

38
. James K. Boyce and Léonce Ndikumana, “Africa’s Odious Debts,” Project Syndicate, June 2003.

39
. Diamond, “Promoting Real Reform in Africa,” p. 6. The number of African countries holding democratic elections has risen slightly since the nadir of the 1980s and now stands at nineteen, but only a quarter of these offer their citizens meaningful civil and political freedom. The distinction between liberal and illiberal democracy is explored at length in Zakaria,
Future of Freedom
. For an illuminating critique, see Dia-mond’s review in
Journal of Democracy
, 14, 4(2003), pp. 167–71.

40
. Acemoglu et al., “African Success Story,” p. 2f.

41
. Ibid., p. 4. Acemoglu et al. give no credit whatever to the legacy of British colonial rule. Another interpretation might be that, compared with (for example) Zimbabwe, the rulers of Botswana have done relatively little to dismantle the British system of noncorrupt administration.

42
. Diamond, “Promoting Real Reform in Africa,” p. 9.

43
. Collier and Hoeffler, “Economic Causes of Civil War.” Cf. Collier, “The Market for Civil War,”
Foreign Policy
, May–June 2003, pp. 38–45; “The Global Menace of Local Strife,”
Economist
, May 24, 2003.

44
. Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict.”

45
. For a useful introduction to the noneconomic facets of globalization, see Held et al.,
Global Transformations
.

46
. Though it should be emphasized that there are limits to how far a complete standardization of economic institutions could be—or for that matter needs to be—taken: Rodrik, “Feasible Globalizations” As Rodrik argues, there is more than one path to prosperity; witness the diversity of institutional arrangements in the world’s largest economies. However, that is not an argument against trying to establish one or other of the successful institutional frameworks in countries that have failed to grow their own. It is not that every country needs to choose among the nation-state, democracy and global economic integration; it is just that some nation-states—usually undemocratic ones—need to have globalization forced upon them.

47
. Ibid., pp. 6–10. For the evidence that the late nineteenth century was indeed the “first age of globalization,” see O’Rourke and Williamson, “When Did Globalization Begin?” See also their
Globalization and History
.

48
. By one measure (net customs revenue as a percentage of net import values) France was in fact more liberal from the 1820s until the mid-1870s: John Vincent Nye, “Myth of Free-Trade Britain.” The real significance of British free trade is that the British retained it even after globalization began to drive down commodity prices in the 1870s.

49
. Bairoch, “European Trade Policy” p. 139.

50
. Edelstein, “Imperialism: Cost and Benefit,” p. 205.

51
. Cain and Hopkins,
British Imperialism
, p. 141.

52
. Ibid., p. 432.

53
. Williamson, “Land, Labor and Globalization.”

54
. See Cain and Hopkins,
British Imperialism
, esp. p. 212.

55
. Clemens and Williamson, “A Tariff-Growth Paradox?”

56
. Irwin, “Tariff-Growth Correlation of the Late Nineteenth Century.”

57
. Constantine, “Migrants and Settlers,” p. 167.

58
. Williamson, “Winners and Losers”; idem, “Land, Labor and Globalization.”

59
. Engerman, “Servants to Slaves,” p. 272.

60
. Tinker,
New System of Slavery
.

61
. Cain and Hopkins,
British Imperialism
, pp. 161–63.

62
. Maddison,
World Economy
, table 2–26a.

63
. Davis and Huttenback,
Mammon
, p. 46.

64
. Maddison,
World Economy
, table 2–26b.

65
. According to Clemens and Williamson, “about two-thirds of [British capital exports] went to the labor-scarce New World where only a tenth of the world’s population lived, and only about a quarter of it went to labor-abundant Asia and Africa where almost two-thirds of the worl’s population lived”: Clemens and Williamson, “Where Did British Foreign Capital Go?”

66
. Obstfeld and Taylor, “Globalization and Capital Markets,” p. 60, figure 10.

67
. Ibid., table 2.

68
. Schularick, “Development Finance,” p. 14 and table 4.

69
. Drazen, “Political-Economic Theory of Domestic Debt.”

70
. The definitive statement is Bordo and Rockoff, “Gold Standard as a ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.’ ”

71
. Eichengreen and Flandreau, “Geography of the Gold Standard,” table 2.

72
. Bordo and Kydland, “Gold Standard as a Commitment Mechanism,” p. 56; Bordo and Schwartz, “Monetary Policy Regimes,” p. 10.

73
. Bordo and Rockoff, ‘ “Good Housekeeping,’ ” pp. 327, 347f.

74
. Ferguson,
Empire
, esp. ch. 4. A modern survey of forty-nine countries concluded that common-law countries offered “the strongest legal protections of investors.” The fact that eighteen of the countries in the sample have the common law system is of course almost entirely due to their having been at one time or another under British rule: La Porta et al., “Law and Finance.”

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