Economic Growth and Development

labour; and ‘neo-Europes’ or ‘settler colonies’ where colonial policy tried to
replicate European institutions with an emphasis on private property and
checks on government power. The former group was exemplified by the
Belgian colonization of the Congo; the latter included Singapore, Hong Kong,
Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. The colonization strategy chosen
was influenced by the feasibility of settlement. Where the disease environment
(see Chapter 11 for a more extended discussion on the geography of disease)
was not favourable to European settlement, the formation of extractive states
was more likely. Their final point was that these colonial institutions tended to
persist after independence.
In their statistical work, Acemoglu et al.(2001) used data on the mortality
rates of soldiers, bishops and sailors stationed in the colonies from the seven-
teenth to nineteenth centuries. There is a strong negative relationship between
GDP per capita today and historical settler mortality in a sample of 75 coun-
tries. The result is robust to the inclusion of controls for the current disease
environment, including the prevalence of malaria, location in Africa, life
expectancy and infant mortality, and the current fraction of the population of
European descent.
The most significant problem with the Acemoglu et al. thesis is that it is not
a direct test of the impact of colonial rule. The results only show that settler
colonies ended up with higher per capita income and better property rights a
century or so later. Other explanations are compatible with this same result:
perhaps settlers were young, ambitious, entrepreneurial and better educated

Colonialism 185

Figure 9.1 Colonialism as a deeper determinant of economic growth

GDP growth

Geography

Figure 9.1

See Chapter 10 See Chapter 11 See Chapter 13

Institutions Openness

Colonialism