The persistent institutional effect of liberal colonialism: evidence from China’s financial policies

ABSTRACT

The effect of liberal colonialism on the allocation of capital persists to this day. We exploit the colonial history of China during 1896-1911 with qualitative evidence to measure liberal colonialism. We document that liberal colonialism promotes the subsequent efficiency of financial policies on the capital allocation in 2004 through the quality of economic institutions.     

COLONIALISM AND LONG‐RUN GROWTH IN AUSTRALIA: AN EXAMINATION OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN VICTORIA'S WATER SECTOR DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Institutional change in water rights in the nineteenth century Australian colony of Victoria raised institutional efficiency, which contributed to long‐run economic growth. High‐quality human capital and the extension of voting rights (franchise) were crucial for efficient institutional change in the water sector. Quality human capital (literacy) appeared to increase the rural population's awareness of the economic impact of the existing structure of water rights that may have constrained growth in the agricultural sector and reduced investment incentives. Extension of the franchise allowed the rural population to exert political pressure for enactment of change in water rights, which resulted in efficiency‐enhancing policies and efficient institutions. The findings show these two factors were more important than Victoria's British colonial heritage in determining whether growth‐enhancing institutional change took place.     

Rhetorics and realities of management practices in Pakistan: Colonial,post-colonial and post-9/11 influences

This study explores how colonial laws and administrative practices shaped the evolution of employment management in Pakistan. It identifies important mechanisms used by the British Raj (the period of British rule of the subcontinent) to institutionalise legal and administrative frameworks: the legacies of these structures continue to influence contemporary management practices in government sector organisations. This article investigates the legacy of the Raj's ‘quota system’ in the civil services and the doctrine of the ‘martial race’ in military services, both of which offered enduring structural advantages in the labour market to designated groups. It further considers the implications of the study's findings for international HRM in particular, but also management theory, comparative HRM and comparative management in post-colonial societies.     

Narco‐frontiers: A spatial framework for drug‐fuelled accumulation

Based on historical and ethnographic research conducted in a region of northwest Colombia and drawing on the stories of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, this article develops the analytical concept of “narco‐frontiers” to help disentangle the confusing political economy of agrarian spaces affected by the violence of the drug war. As socially produced spaces, narco‐frontiers emerge through the convergence of four interlocking processes: uneven development, internal colonialism, political violence, and narco‐fuelled dispossession. Although often depicted as “ungovernable” or “stateless” spaces, narco‐frontiers are wracked by extra‐legal regimes of rule in which the state is simply one actor among others. With the drug trade inducing violent agrarian change all over the world—from Colombia to Afghanistan, Burma to Central America—this article offers a spatial‐historical framework for understanding these dramatic transformations.     

Shares of the Rich and the Rest in the World Economy: Income Divergence Between Nations, 1820–2030

This paper analyses the forces determining per capita income levels of nations over the past millennium and the prospects to 2030. In the year 1000, Asian countries were in the lead. By 1820, per capita gross domestic product in Western Europe and the USA was twice the Asian average. The divergence had grown much bigger by 1950, but by the 1970s, several Asian countries – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore – had achieved considerable catch-up. Since then, there has been a major surge in China and the beginning of a similar phenomenon in India. As a result, the Asian share of world income has risen steadily and, by 2030, will be fairly close to what it was in 1820. I conclude by comparing my projections for 2030 with those of Goldman Sachs, Perkins and Rawski, and Fogel.     

Tourism knowledge and neocolonialism – a systematic critical review of the literature

Despite the official end of colonialism in the twentieth century, neocolonial structures of power have kept influencing the political, socio-cultural and economic arenas worldwide. Within this scenario, the tourism academy has seen its landscape develop with its own set of power structures, which have shaped its knowledge production and dissemination. However, whether and how neocolonial forces have exerted their influence on tourism knowledge production and dissemination is still a subject of debate among scholars. This paper was conceived as an attempt to cast additional light on the nexus between tourism knowledge and neocolonialism. More specifically, through a systematic review of the articles published in tourism journals in the last decade (2007–2017), this work assesses the status of the current tourism knowledge through the lens of neocolonialist theory. Overall, this critical review highlights that with some exceptions, most of the previous reviews concerning tourism knowledge only evaluate the work published in English in highly ranked tourism journals and tend to neglect knowledge systems outside the English-speaking global centres. Furthermore, previous studies exploring structures of power affecting tourism knowledge production and dissemination present limitations in terms of the themes and perspectives identified.     

State Capacity and the Economic History of Colonial India

The paper re-examines the role of the state in economic change in colonial India (1757–1947), by paying attention to fiscal capacity. This capacity was larger than that of the precolonial states, and based on different foundations, such as centralisation of finance and securitisation of public debt. Nevertheless, the effort to raise finance hit a barrier, which had owed to the separation of debt from revenue operations. Did the barrier matter? By keeping markets open, the colonial state served private enterprise, but its failure to sustain growth in fiscal capacity compromised public investment in infrastructure and social development.     

Rezoned for Business: How Eco-Tourism Unlocked Black Farmland in Eastern Zimbabwe

Eco‐tourism is undermining black smallholders' entitlement to land in Zimbabwe. In the 1890s, British administrators restrained whites from alienating the whole of the country by demarcating native reserves. In terms of this limited aim, the policy of native reserves worked. It ensured a land base for black agriculture, particularly for women and children. In the late 1980s, however, CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) invited the tourism industry to begin operations in the lowland reserves. These ?rms have claimed land, made money and relocated smallholders. Based on economic and ecological arguments, CAMPFIRE has rede ?ned the black entitlement as merely a claim competing with those of other ‘stakeholders’. No guarantees exist for residents and cultivators. Indeed, government and NGOs are fast transforming the lowland reserves into privileged and subsidized investment zones. Held in check for a century, a new kind of settler colonialism is sweeping down from the highlands.     

Agriculture and 'Improvement' in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of Development

The doctrine of 'improvement' has often been identified with the introduction – and presumed failure – of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal in 1793. Although recognized as central to British agrarian policies in India, its wider impact and significance have been insufficiently explored. Aesthetic taste, moral judgement and botanical enthusiasm combined with more strictly economic criteria to give an authority to the idea of improvement that endured into the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Concern for improvement also reflected dissatisfaction with India's apparent poverty and deficient material environment; it helped stimulate data-collection and ambitious schemes of agrarian transformation. A precursor of later concepts of development, not least in its negative presumptions about India and the search for external agencies of change, improvement yet shows many of the false starts and intrinsic limitations early attempts to transform rural India entailed. This article reassesses the significance of improvement in the first half of the nineteenth century in India, especially as illustrated through contemporary travel literature and through the aims and activities of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India.