Douglass North once emphasized that development takes centuries, but he did not have a theory of how and why change occurs. This groundbreaking book advances such a theory by examining in detail why England and Spain developed so slowly from 1000 to 1800. A colonial legacy must go back centuries...

Uncommon Wealth is the little known and shocking history of how Britain treated its former non-white colonies after the end of empire. It is the story of how an interconnected group of British capitalists enabled horrific inequality across the globe, profiting in colonial Africa, Asia and the...

The cotton crisis: Lancashire, the American South, and the turn to "Empire Cotton" -- "The Black man's crop": The British Cotton Growing Association and Africa -- "The scientific redemption of Africa": Coercion and regulation in colonial agriculture -- "King Cotton's impoverished retinue":...