Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (37 page)

BOOK: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

12.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

While the variety of extractive institutions ranging from absolutism to states with little centralization failed to take advantage of the spread of industry, the critical juncture of the Industrial Revolution had very different effects in other parts of the world. As we will see in
chapter 10
, societies that had already taken steps toward inclusive political and economic institutions, such as the United States and Australia, and those where absolutism was more seriously challenged, such as France and Japan, took advantage of these new economic opportunities and started a process of rapid economic growth. As such, the usual pattern of interaction between a critical juncture and existing institutional differences leading to further institutional and economic divergence played out again in the nineteenth century, and this time with an even bigger bang and more fundamental effects on the prosperity and poverty of nations.

North of the fence: Nogales, Arizona
Jim
West/imagebroker.net/Photolibrary

South of the fence: Nogales, Sonora
Jim
West/age fotostock/Photolibrary

Consequences of a level playing field: Thomas Edison’s 1880 patent for the lightbulb Records of the Patent and Trademark Office;
Record Group 241; National Archives

Economic losers from creative destruction: machine-breaking Luddites in early-nineteenth-century Britain
Mary Evans Picture Library/Tom Morgan

Consequences of a complete lack of political centralization in Somalia
REUTERS/Mohamed Guled/Landov

Successive beneficiaries of extractive institutions in Congo:

King of Kongo
© CORBIS
King Leopold II
The Granger Collection, NY

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu
© Richard Melloul/Sygma/CORBIS

Laurent Kabila
© Reuters/CORBIS

The Glorious Revolution: William III of Orange is read the Bill of Rights before being offered the crown of England by parliament
After Edgar Melville Ward/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images

The bubonic plague of the fourteenth century creates a critical juncture (
The Triumph of Death
painting of the Black Death by Brueghel the Elder)
The Granger Collection, NY