History Pro

Between 1400 and 1900, Africa experienced four slave trades: the transatlantic trade (to the New World), the trans-Saharan trade, the Red Sea trade, and the Indian Ocean trade. The colonial powers were the primary participants in the transatlantic trade, which brought over 12 million slaves to the New World (Nunn, 2008).

Qo'shma Shtatlarida qashshoq oilalarning yarmidan ko'prog'ida hech kim ishlamaydi, shuning uchun eng kam ish haqi miqdorini oshirish ularga yordam bermaydi.

If everyone is believed to be corrupt, there is little cost to being corrupt and no benefit to not being corrupt.

...many people (not least successful business executives themselves) believe that someone who has made a personal fortune will know how to make an entire nation more prosperous. In fact, his or her advice is often disastrously misguided.

An expansive state with a large but inefficient public bureaucracy may attempt but fail to achieve many goals.

*

King Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–98) was so renowned for defaulting on his debts that Drelichman and Voth (2016) call him “the borrower from hell.”

Unlike today, parliaments were only in session when they were called by the monarch. And monarchs were only likely to call parliaments when they needed something – mainly taxes.

In the reign of Edward I (r. 1272–1307), Parliament became crucial in granting the king the right to collect taxes.

During the reign of John’s successor, Henry III (r. 1216–72), the term “parliament” emerged to describe meetings between the king and the leading barons. The initial role of Parliament was judicial. It was employed to hear a variety of legal cases, and it soon became important in fiscal matters as well.

When power is held narrowly or the state is too weak to be effective, the conditions are ripe for some individuals or groups to extract from each other. Long-lasting economic development is rarely achieved in such an environment. One need look no further than modern-day autocracies for examples of extractive political institutions.

In societies where the political system is in the hands of a narrow elite, this elite can use their power to construct economic institutions that benefit themselves but impoverish the rest of society.