As I discussed below, one of the most popular papers in recent economics was "Law and Finance," which argued that countries whose legal systems derive from the British common law provide more protection of outside shareholders than countries with French-derived law codes. Over time, however, this useful little insight has bloviated into a general explanation for the wealth and poverty of nations, illustrating the tendency of modern economists to not see what is in front of their noses. A reader writes: I'm curious to hear how they compare the relative performance of Taiwan and Singapore, both with Chinese populations, the latter with a British legal heritage and the former without such a heritage, but with almost identical GDPs per capita today. There is clearly some benefit to be derived from *not* being ruled by mainland China, but it seems to matter rather less *who* colonized you (at least, between Britain and Japan).
I'm also curious to hear how they compare the relative performance of Malaysia and Thailand. Their economic performance is fairly similar (Malaysia is a bit ahead) but Thailand was never colonized at all. (Thailand, by the way, is about 14% ethnic Chinese, not so wildly different from Malaysia's 24%.)
It's interesting to look at the list below of countries in Africa, their former colonial masters, and GDP per capita (PPP method, from the CIA factbook), ranked by GDP per capita: Country Colonial Power $GDP per Capita South Africa Britain 10,700 Botswana Britain 9,000 Namibia Britain (prev German) 7,200 Tunisia France 6,900 Libya Italy 6,400 Algeria France 6,000 Gabon France 5,500 Swaziland Britain 4,900 Egypt Britain 4,000 Morocco France 4,000 Lesotho Britain 3,000 Equatorial Guinea Spain 2,700 Ghana Britain 2,200 Guinea France 2,100 Angola Portugal 1,900 Zimbabwe Britain 1,900 Sudan Britain 1,900 Mauritania France 1,800 Cameroon France (prev German) 1,800 Gambia Britain 1,700 Senegal France 1,600 Togo France 1,500 Uganda Britain 1,400 Cote D'Ivoire France 1,400 Rwanda Belgium 1,300 Djibouti France 1,300 Chad France 1,200 Sao Tome & Principe Portugal 1,200 Mozambique Portugal 1,200 Benin France 1,100 Burkina Faso France 1,100 Central African Repub France 1,100 Kenya Britain 1,000 Liberia USA (sort of) 1,000 Mali France 900 Nigeria Britain 900 Zambia Britain 800 Guinea-Bissau Portugal 800 Madagascar France 800 Niger France 800 Ethiopia Italy (sort of) 700 Eritrea Italy 700 Comoros France 700 Congo, Dem Republic Belgium 700 Congo, Republic France 700 Burundi Belgium 600 Tanzania Britain (prev German) 600 Malawi Britain 600 Sierra Leone Britain 500 Somalia Italy (and Britain) 500 You can find pairings that look like they support the Legal Affairs contention and pairings that look like they refute it. Ghana (fmr British) is doing better now than Togo, Benin or the Ivory Coast (all fmr French). But Nigeria and Sierra Leone (both fmr British) are doing substantially worse than Cameroon and Guinea (both fmr French). And Senegal (fmr French) and the Gambia (fmr British) look pretty much identical. Algeria (fmr French) and Egypt (fmr British) each have Arab populations, lots of sand and some oil. But Algeria is doing better economically in spite of the fact that it's been more politically unstable of late, and the fact that Egypt has the canal and massive American support. The bottom four basket cases on the list, in economic terms - Tanzania, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Somalia - were all at least partly colonized by Britain.
Britain's most successful former colonies in sub-saharan Africa are South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, plus Swaziland and Lesotho, which were never precisely colonies. South Africa dominates the economy of the region, and it is only 75% black African. Namibia is 87% black African and Botswana's stats are not usefully broken out (they count white in the category "other" and I don't know what else is in that category; "other" is 7% of the country). So it's plausible to attribute the outperformance of this entire region to South African exceptionalism, which is surely related to the exceptional racial breakdown of the country. Of the next batch - Ghana, Zimbabwe, Gambia and Uganda - none has a non-African population above 2%. Meanwhile, the most successful French former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa are Gabon, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal and Togo. Gabon is 1% French, but 11% "other Africans and Europeans" and it has a tiny population, so maybe it's an outlier and we should discount it [It's just an oil spigot country.] The next four countries have non-African populations of well under 2% - smaller, on average, than the four British successes. And their average GDPs are pretty similar: Country Colonial Power Non-African % Total Populat GDP per Capita (USD)
Gambia Britain 1% 1.6mm 1,700 Senegal France 1% 10.9mm 1,600
Uganda Britain 1% 26.4mm 1,400 Do you see a pattern here? I don't.
"British vs. French ex-Empires:"
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