In Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, henceforth AJR, (2001), we advanced the hypothesis that the mortality rates faced by Europeans in different parts of the world after 1500 affected their willingness to establish settlements and choice of colonization strategy. Places that were relatively healthy (for Europeans) were—when they fell under European control—more likely to receive better economic and political institutions. In contrast, places where European settlers were less likely to go were more likely to have “extractive” institutions imposed. We also posited that this early pattern of institutions has persisted over time and influences the extent and nature of institutions in the modern world. On this basis, we proposed using estimates of potential European settler mortality as an instrument for institutional variation in former European colonies today. Data on settlers themselves are unfortunately patchy—particularly because not many went to places they believed, with good reason, to be most unhealthy. We therefore followed the lead of Curtin (1989 and 1998) who compiled data on the death rates faced by European soldiers in various overseas postings. 1 Curtin’s data were based on pathbreaking data collection and statistical work initiated by the British military in the mid-nineteenth century. These data became part of the foundation of both contemporary thinking about public health (for soldiers and for civilians) and the life insurance industry (as actuaries and executives considered the

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The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation

Among countries colonized by European powers during the past 500 years, those that were relatively rich in 1500 are now relatively poor. We document this reversal using data on urbanization patterns and population density, which, we argue, proxy for economic prosperity. This reversal weighs against a view that links economic development to geographic factors. Instead, we argue that the reversal ree ects changes in the institutions resulting from European colonialism. The European intervention appears to have created an “ institutional reversal” among these societies, meaning that Europeans were more likely to introduce institutions encouraging investment in regions that were previously poor. This institutional reversal accounts for the reversal in relative incomes. We provide further support for this view by documenting that the reversal in relative incomes took place during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and resulted from societies with good institutions taking advantage of the opportunity to industrialize.

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Reversal of fortune: geography and institutions in the making of the modern world income distribution*

The explanations offered for the contrasting records of long-run growth and development among the societies of North and South America most often focus on institutions. The traditional explanations for the sources of these differences in institutions, typically highlight the significance of national heritage or religion. We, in contrast, argue that a hemispheric perspective across the wide range of colonies established in the New World by the Europeans suggests that although there were many influences, factor endowments or initial conditions had profound and enduring effects on the long-run paths of institutional and economic development followed by the respective economies.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.14.3.217

History Lessons Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9106/w9106.pdf

Tropics, germs, and crops: how endowments influence economic development

Whereas traditional explanations of differen ces in long-run paths of development acrossthe Americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion,we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth, human capital,and political power in accounting for how fundame ntal economic institutions evolved over time.We argue, moreover, that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay indifferences in the initial factor endowments (dating back to the era of European colonization).We document -- through comparative studies of suffrage, public land, and schooling policies --systematic patterns by which societies in the Am ericas that began with more extreme inequalityor heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatlyadvantaged members of elite classes (and disa dvantaging the bulk of th e population) by providingthem with more political influence and access to economic opportunities. The clear implicationis that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous; economists need to learn more aboutwhere they come from to understand their relation to economic development. Our findings notonly contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality acrossNew World economies have persisted for centuries, but also to the study of processes of long-runeconomic growth past and present. Stanley L. Engerman Kenneth L. SokoloffDepartment of Economics Department of EconomicsUniversity of Rochester University of California, Los AngelesRochester, NY 14627 Los Angeles, CA 90095and NBER and NBERenge@troi.cc.rochester.edu sokoloff@ucla.edu

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Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development among New World Economies

First published by UNC Press in 1972, Sugar and Slaves presents a vivid portrait of English life in the Caribbean more than three centuries ago. Using a host of contemporary primary sources, Richard Dunn traces the development of plantation slave society in the region. He examines sugar production techniques, the vicious character of the slave trade, the problems of adapting English ways to the tropics, and the appalling mortality rates for both blacks and whites that made these colonies the richest, but in human terms the least successful, in English America.

Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713

Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713.

Sugar and slaves

O z N April i, i68o, Sir Jonathan Atkins, governor of Barbados, sent a box full of statistical data about his island to the Plantation Office at Whitehall. This mass of data, filed away among the Colonial Office papers, constitutes the most comprehensive surviving census of any English colony in the seventeenth century.' Indeed, it is a richer store of information than any North American census before the I770's. The Barbados census of i68o was ignored at the time by the Lords of Trade, and it has been ignored ever since by historians of Barbados.2 Nearly a century ago, John Camden Hotten discovered Atkins's data in the Public Record Office and published large sections of it, though for some curious reason he omitted half the parish lists.8 Hotten's interest was genealogical, but the prime value of the Barbados census is economic and social. The detailed lists Governor Atkins sent home demonstrate that there was an elaborately developed social hier-

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1922291.pdf

The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America

ON January 1, 1809, John Tayloe, one of Virginia’s leading planters, took a detailed census of the 384 slaves on his Mount Airy estate, listing each man, woman, and child by name, age, occupation, and monetary value. On the same day the overseer for a big Jamaican absentee planter, Joseph Foster Barham, was taking a similar census of the 322 slaves on Barham’s Mesopotamia estate in which he listed each person by name, age, occupation, and physical condition. Thousands of other North American and West Indian slave inventories survive, especially in probate records, but what gives the Mount Airy and Mesopotamia lists special value is that the owners of these estates made a systematic practice of cataloguing their slave gangs annually over a long time span. The Barhams at Mesopotamia kept annual inventories from 1751 to 1832; seventy-five of these lists survive.
 1
 The Tayloes at Mount Airy kept annual inventories from 1808 to 1855, and forty-five of these lists survive.
 2
 Setting the two lists of 1809 against each other, we 216can compare the structure of a Virginia plantation with a Jamaica plantation at a particular moment—just as the slave trade was closing in the United States and the British West Indies. Setting the two series of inventories against each other, we can make a running comparison between the two estates over a considerable stretch of years, and get a sense of two distinctly different slave communities in action.

Richard S. Dunn

Papers

Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713

Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713.

Sugar and slaves

The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America

A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life at Mesopotamia in Jamaica and Mount Airy in Virginia, 1799 to 1828