We cannot hope to formulate adequate development theory and policy for the majority of the world's population who suffer from underdevelopment without first learning how their past economic and social history gave rise to their present underdevelopment. Yet most historians study only the developed metropolitan countries and pay scant attention to the colonial and underdeveloped lands. For this ...

The two inheritors of the British colonialism, India and Pakistan who got independence in the aftermath of Second World War inherited poverty and underdevelopment at the end of the colonial rule. The colonial rule ended in destroying the traditional and indigenous institutions and a legacy of colonial capitalism. Pakistan and India followed two different approaches of development. India chose t...

Open a book — any book —on the economics of developing countries, and it will begin with the usual litany of woes. Developing countries, notwithstanding the enormous strides they have made in the last few decades, display fundamental economic inadequacies in a wide range of indicators. Levels of physical capital per person are small. Nutrition levels are low. Other indicators of human capital s...

Economic development and underdevelopment is one aspect of the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity. This paper reviews existing literature on geography and development, and argues that rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis is needed to increase understanding of the role of geography in development and to better design development policy. The analytical issues are: why does ec...

Animal viral diseases in Latin American countries are studied in the light of the growing economic dependence between industrialized countries and countries producing raw materials, including animal pro­ tein. Viral diseases contribute to create the status of underdevelopment but may also be consequences of this status. The history of the livestock industry in Latin America, where viral disease...

Scholars have pointed to ethnic and other social divisions as a leading cause of economic underdevelopment, due in part to their adverse effects on public good provision and collective action. We investigate this issue in post-war Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest countries. To address concerns over endogenous local ethnic composition, and in an advance over most existing empirical work,...

This paper provides a historical analysis of persistent problems with underdevelopment and uneven development in Southern Africa by examining preand post-liberation trajectories in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. The aim is to understand how capitalism in Southern Africa impacts struggles to transform social and economic relations in the pursuit of broad-based and sustained improvements in...

war and conflicts within and among third world countries and between them and western countries, despite the end of the cold war, continues to produce fear and threat, violence, insecurity and instability. they are some of the most important causes of pain and misery of peoples, together with immense human, social, economic and developmental costs, with vast and durable consequences, in deepest...

This papers analyses the causes behind Africa’s unfortunate transformation into the source of the world’s slaves over the early modern period. We discuss the economic and technological forces leading to it, and address questions such as why were most slave buyers Europeans and most slave sellers Africans. We then relate the discussion to the long-term determinants of African underdevelopment, a...