Rich Nations, Poor Nations: The Long-Run Perspective.

According to the introduction, the authors use a "European Mirror" to study why "Europe, along with its overseas appendages, has been the dominant force in economic development since the sixteenth century," as well as "the historical experience of the world's first industrialized continent" [p. xii]. Based on these comments, I expected to write a Blautian rebuke of eurocentricism's centrality in economic development literature. After the first chapter on "the penalty of lateness," I remained prepared to be critical because of the eurocentric position it presents.

However, my opinion quickly changed as I found the remaining essays full of original ideas and interpretations of economic data explaining the historical movement of economic dominance from East to West, and in some cases back to the East. Chapters address regional development issues important to the study of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin. American, the Pacific Rim, and the Indian sub-continent. The authors also discuss comparative institutional factors affecting market liberalization, and in doing so address the negative legacy of colonial interference. Some authors recognize, either directly or by implication, that World Wars I and II left Europe and Japan without their historical economic agencies. This situation allowed them to create a new sense of regional unity revolving around trade rather than ethnicity and led to the development of the modern institutions that dominate world trade. In other cases, where peoples have not taken pragmatic views of human trading interactions, historical enmities and conflicts have impeded the building of modern institutions.

The collection includes nine chapters that build on two main themes, colonial interference and market liberalization. The most prominent of these is the lingering effect of colonialism, which is mentioned in almost every chapter. For example, in the third chapter, Werner Baer and Joseph L. Love link colonial trade regimes and the development of Latin America's "backwardness," focusing on the difference between cooperation and interference. They assert that in Latin American countries, where U.S. and European interference remains substantial, such as in Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras, that effective economic agencies have yet to develop and that incomes remain persistently low. However, in countries where economic cooperation has been fostered, such as in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, that U.S. and European assistance has helped place these countries in the "upper middle income" level.

While the authors' view of colonialism's long-term economic impact vary widely, almost every chapter acknowledges that Western powers historically and currently interfere in LDC markets. Stuart Jones takes up this issue in relation to sub-Saharan Africa's economic failures since 1960. A. J. H. Latham's chapter looks at both the positive and negative influences of colonialist trading networks that evolved between Europe and Asia. In addition, while David F. Good does not look at colonialism per se in his chapter on income disparities between Eastern bloc and Western bloc European nations, he draws an interesting and unique conclusion that with respect to income disparities, "the explanation lies ultimately in the patterns of state building and economy building that has characterized 'the lands between' Germany and Russia" and related "destabilizing external shocks" [p. 77].

Good's chapter is also one of several chapters that identify impediments to market liberalization efforts. There is no question as to the positive influences fairly regulated markets can have on a country's economy. The more important question is how to turn less-than-equitable markets into equitable and functional markets. Contributors address this issue in chapter seven written by Subrata Ghatak and Utka Utkulu, who investigate the comparative success of Turkey, Malaysia, and India in developing trade and exchange rate liberalization, in chapter eight by Erik S. Reinert, who writes about ways technology, or the lack thereof, leads to the development of fair and rich markets, or poor and corrupt ones, and in chapter nine by Ross Catterall, who looks into globalizing capital markets as an explanation of why we live in an economically divided world. Each of these authors present readable discussions that draw thought-provoking conclusions about our economic history.

I found J. R. McNeil's chapter particularly interesting. In it he writes about "flexible fertility regimes and the wealth of nations" and the way reserves of unmarried persons in Western Europe and Japan allowed those areas to better regulate the size and productivity of their populations in times of famine, plague or war. While the economics of fertility has been addressed by Gary S. Becker and others, McNeil takes an original step and illustrates how a society's ability to self-regulate its population growth rate provides substantial competitive advantages for a regional economy. His argument adds a significant and new perspective to literature dealing with social environmentalism and the cultural origins of economic institutions.

The book's impact could have been enhanced by including chapters or discussions of other important regional economies where income divisions have lead to conflict. Several authors could have extended their analysis by describing how economic inequities in African and Asia have created perceived justifications for military and social conflict. Certainly post-colonial foreign economic interventions have also facilitated economic inequalities leading to open militarism. In Northern Africa, for example, Egypt and Algeria are both left with entrenched but debilitating economic institutions. Unbalanced aid interventions in the Levant have left that region in a perpetual state of economic decline. Economic interventions in Central Asia are also creating class disparities that make armed conflict inevitable.

That said, however, this collection is a success and should be of particular interest to social science specialists, and anyone interested in the reasons disparities exist between rich and poor nations. Its use of diverse methodologies and perspectives, its coverage of a wide range of geographical areas, and the original conclusions its authors present, make its chapters valuable reading for students and others interested in comparative economic systems and institution building. In addition, the editors deserve credit for pulling together a text that combines analyses of historical economic data and the use of modern economic development literature and applications. This weaving together of approaches allows the book to make a unique contribution that, as Catterall points out in his concluding sentence, contains lessons applying "to all countries - developed and developing - and to all points of the compass - north, south, east and west" [p. 219].

J. W. Wright, Jr. American University in Dubai