Shackled to the past

The Boston Globe ^ | April 20, 2008 | Francie Latour

[forkinsocket]

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.

more stories like this 3-year agriculture report release coincides with food riots African nations should nationalize oil: Venezuela India pledges aid to African leaders World Bank expects more high food prices Mineral-rich Africa entices expansive India 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.

[forkinsocket]

.

[dynachrome]

Blah,blah, blah, blah. and boils down to”

“long-term investments to rebuild economic and political institutions.”

“Gimme money”

[BitBucket]

It all boils down to the three M’s of foreign aid: Monuments, Mercedes, and Machine guns.

[Maceman]

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.

And therefore, what?

Captain Obvious: The more a country sells its people into international slavery, the less wealth that country produces, the more entrenched poverty it builds, and the shorter its end of the economic stick will be? What a truly brilliant, stunning, "groundbreaking" insight!

I hope this guy got a lot of money for this incredibly valuable study. It was worth it.

Actually, this study probably will have some value -- to somebody who'll figure out a way to use it as a basis for claiming reparations from somebody else.

[dirtymac]

the basis of his study has built in bias since he limits his study of the slave trade to the 1400’s to 1900’s era of the Western slave trade therby ignoring the slave trade with the middle east Muslim countries. This is just a statement that Western Europe and America caused all this.

He also tries to justify his conclusion of heavy slave traffic causes current poverty with the proof that lower slave trade resulted in prosperity, like South Africa. This ignores the most significant contribution of the Dutch and British contribution starting in the 1600’s. South Africa was settle first by Dutch immigrants. The land was virtually uninhabited until they arrived (Read Washing of the Spears).

The poverty is not caused by the slave trade but by the continual tribal warfare across the continent.

[dynachrome]

“claiming reparations from somebody else.”

And we know who the someone else is.