The New Economic History of Africa
非洲新经济史
Author(s): A. G. Hopkins 作者：A. G. 霍普金斯
Source: The Journal of African History, 2009, Vol. 50, No. 2 (2009), pp. 155-177
《资料来源非洲历史杂志》，2009 年，第 50 卷，第 2 期（2009 年），第 155-177 页
Published by: Cambridge University Press
出版商：剑桥大学出版社剑桥大学出版社
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25622019
稳定 URL：https://www.jstor.org/stable/25622019

Linked references are available on JSTOR for this artigle:
本文章的链接参考文献可在 JSTOR 上查阅：
https:// $$$$quad\quad-jistor.org/stable/25622019?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents.
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
您可能需要登录 JSTOR 才能访问链接的参考文献。

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
JSTOR 是一项非营利性服务，帮助学者、研究人员和学生发现、使用和利用值得信赖的数字档案中的各种内容。我们利用信息技术和工具提高工作效率，促进新形式的学术研究。有关 JSTOR 的更多信息，请联系 support@jstor.org。
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms
使用 JSTOR 档案表明您接受《使用条款和条件》，请访问 https://about.jstor.org/terms 。

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of African History
剑桥大学出版社正在与 JSTOR 合作，对《非洲历史杂志》进行数字化、保存和扩展访问。

KEY WORDS: Economic, historiography.
关键词：经济、历史学。

W нат has happened to the study of Africa’s economic history? The subject emerged in the 1960s, colonized the greater part of the continent during the 1970s, and for a decade or so was thought to be essential to understanding the long-run causes of underdevelopment. By the close of the 1980s, however, economic history was in failing health; in the r 990 its public appearances were limited; today, it seems to have died, unlamented, from that most mortifying of scholarly ailments - neglect. Before tolling the bell, however, it is worth checking to see if resuscitation is still possible, and, if so, what useful purpose it might serve. This article sounds a trumpet. It aims to alert historians to missed opportunities, to attract them to the continuing possibilities of studying Africa’s economic past, and thus to signal the prospective revival of the subject. The moment, moreover, is apposite: during the past decade, economists seeking solutions to Africa’s development problems
非洲经济史研究发生了什么变化？这一学科出现于 20 世纪 60 年代，在 20 世纪 70 年代占据了非洲大陆的大部分地区，并在十多年的时间里被认为是了解欠发达长期原因的关键。然而，到了 20 世纪 80 年代末，经济史的健康状况却每况愈下；在 1990 年代，它的公开露面次数有限；如今，它似乎已死于最令人痛心的学术疾病--疏忽，而无人哀悼。不过，在敲响丧钟之前，我们不妨先看看是否还有复苏的可能，如果有的话，它还能发挥什么作用。本文吹响了号角。它旨在提醒历史学家们注意错失的机会，吸引他们继续研究非洲经济的过去，从而预示着这一主题复兴的前景。此外，本文的时机也很恰当：在过去的十年中，寻求解决非洲发展问题的经济学家们

have created a new type of economic history. Their work is virtually unknown to specialists on African history and has yet to feature in any of the three most relevant scholarly outlets: this $\mathcal{F}\mathcal{o}\mathcal{u}\mathcal{r}\mathcal{n}\mathcal{a}\mathcal{l}\mathcal{,}$$\mathcal{F}\mathcal{o}\mathcal{u}\mathcal{r}\mathcal{n}\mathcal{a}\mathcal{l}\mathcal{,}$Fournal,\mathcal{F o u r n a l ,}, the International fournal of African Historical Studies and African Economic History. ${}^1$${}^1$^(1){ }^{1} It is time that historians took notice.
他们创造了一种新型的经济史。他们的研究成果几乎不为非洲史专家所知，也没有出现在三本最相关的学术刊物上：本刊 $\mathcal{F}\mathcal{o}\mathcal{u}\mathcal{r}\mathcal{n}\mathcal{a}\mathcal{l}\mathcal{,}$$\mathcal{F}\mathcal{o}\mathcal{u}\mathcal{r}\mathcal{n}\mathcal{a}\mathcal{l}\mathcal{,}$Fournal,\mathcal{F o u r n a l ,} 、《非洲历史研究国际期刊》（International fournal of African Historical Studies）和《非洲经济史》（African Economic History）。 ${}^1$${}^1$^(1){ }^{1} 是时候让历史学家们注意到这一点了。

These very general statements need refining. The claim made here is not that the study of Africa’s economic history has ceased: that would be an unjust judgement on research of the highest quality undertaken on both external relations, notably the slave trade, and the domestic economy since the 1980s. It is equally apparent, however, that economic history has lost status and visibility during the last twenty years. It is no longer considered to be at the ‘cutting edge’ of historical studies. A subject declines in relative importance when it ceases to generate the overarching propositions that capture the attention of a sizeable segment of the profession. The excellent research completed during the last twenty years has generally taken the form of micro-studies or thematic enquiries that are either unrelated or have yet to be connected. ${}^2$${}^2$^(2){ }^{2} The broadest studies with the largest theses were all produced by the first generation of scholars who entered African history at the time of independence. The following examples illustrate the point: my own Economic History of West Africa, published in 1973, has not been replaced; the last and only substantial economic history of sub-Saharan Africa, by Ralph Austen, appeared in 1987; Charles Feinstein’s economic history of South Africa, though published recently, was completed just before his death at the age of $72.{}^3$$72.{}^3$72.^(3)72 .{ }^{3} The only book on poverty in Africa written by a historian, John Iliffe, appeared in $1987.{}^4$$1987.{}^4$1987.^(4)1987 .{ }^{4} The most recent survey of the state of the subject was published by Patrick Manning, also in $1987.{}^5$$1987.{}^5$1987.^(5)1987 .{ }^{5} In retrospect, it can be seen that 1987 marks not only the high point but also the culmination of an endeavour that began in the 1960 . It is now more than twenty years since
需要对这些非常笼统的说法加以细化。这里所说的并不是非洲经济史研究已经停止：这是对自 20 世纪 80 年代以来在对外关系（特别是奴隶贸易）和国内经济两方面开展的最高质量的研究的不公正评价。然而，同样明显的是，经济史在过去二十年中失去了地位和知名度。它不再被视为历史研究的 "前沿"。当一个学科不再提出吸引相当一部分专业人士关注的总体命题时，它的相对重要性就会下降。过去二十年间完成的出色研究一般都是以微观研究或专题调查的形式进行的，这些研究或互不相关，或尚未联系起来。 ${}^2$${}^2$^(2){ }^{2} 范围最广、论文最多的研究都是由独立时进入非洲历史研究领域的第一代学者完成的。以下例子可以说明这一点：我本人于 1973 年出版的《西非经济史》至今无人取代；拉尔夫-奥斯汀（Ralph Austen）于 1987 年出版了最后一部也是唯一一部实质性的撒哈拉以南非洲经济史；查尔斯-费恩斯坦的《南非经济史》虽然出版不久，但却是在他逝世前完成的，享年 $72.{}^3$$72.{}^3$72.^(3)72 .{ }^{3} 唯一一本由历史学家约翰-伊利夫撰写的关于非洲贫困问题的书籍于 $1987.{}^4$$1987.{}^4$1987.^(4)1987 .{ }^{4} 帕特里克-曼宁（Patrick Manning）对该主题现状的最新调查报告也于 $1987.{}^5$$1987.{}^5$1987.^(5)1987 .{ }^{5} 回过头来看，1987 年不仅标志着一个高潮，也标志着始于 1960 年代的努力达到了顶峰。现在距离

historians themselves produced big arguments attempting to understand Africa’s long-run economic development and continuing poverty.
历史学家自己也提出了大量论据，试图理解非洲的长期经济发展和持续贫困。

The explanation of the relative decline of the subject lies in the convergence of trends that had entirely separate origins. Diminishing interest in African economic history was partly a product of the decay of economic history in general. This development, in turn, stemmed on the one hand from the withering of the radical inspiration of the 1960 and 1970s, and on the other from the process of cleavage in universities that divided history from economics and took the economic segment into technical complexities that escaped the interest, as well as the grasp, of most historians. A second and wholly different influence, the rise to prominence of postmodernism, shifted attention in the ig90s from material to cultural considerations. This was the price paid for enabling elements of the radical tradition to survive: Antonio Gramsci validated the connection to Marx but did so by emphasizing the importance of forms of cultural hegemony that harked back to Hegelian idealism and associated anti-positivist strains of thought. Inspiration drawn from Gramsci was reinforced by non-Marxist and predominantly literary sources, notably Edward Said’s Orientalism, which pointed in the same direction. ${}^6$${}^6$^(6){ }^{6} The result turned a generation of young researchers away from materialism, macro-historical projects and what was seen to be naïve realism, and towards the study of how European representations of indigenous societies had been used to perpetuate colonial control. This approach, whatever its merits, was not one that encouraged the study of economic history. ${}^7$${}^7$^(7){ }^{7} Accordingly, the subject found itself caught between positivist economic theory, which was remote and unhistorical, and cultural analysis, which was removed from economic considerations and, though historical in intent, was sometimes defective in its use of historical sources. It is scarcely surprising that economic history languished.
该学科相对衰落的原因在于完全不同起源的趋势汇聚在一起。对非洲经济史兴趣的减少在一定程度上是整个经济史衰落的产物。这种发展一方面源于 1960 和 1970 年代激进灵感的凋零，另一方面源于大学的分裂进程，这一进程将历史学与经济学分割开来，并将经济学部分带入了技术性的复杂领域，从而使大多数历史学家失去了兴趣和把握能力。第二种完全不同的影响，即后现代主义的崛起，在 20 世纪 90 年代将人们的注意力从物质因素转移到了文化因素上。这也是激进主义传统得以延续的代价：安东尼奥-葛兰西（Antonio Gramsci）确认了与马克思的联系，但同时也强调了文化霸权形式的重要性，而这种文化霸权形式又回溯到黑格尔的唯心主义和相关的反实证主义思潮。非马克思主义的、以文学为主的资料来源，尤其是爱德华-萨义德的《东方学》（Orientalism），加强了葛兰西的启发，这些资料来源指向同一个方向。 ${}^6$${}^6$^(6){ }^{6} 其结果是，一代年轻的研究人员放弃了唯物主义、宏观历史项目和被视为幼稚的现实主义，转而研究欧洲对土著社会的表述是如何被用来延续殖民控制的。无论这种方法有什么优点，它都不鼓励研究经济史。 ${}^7$${}^7$^(7){ }^{7} 因此，该学科陷入了实证主义经济理论和文化分析的两难境地，前者遥远而缺乏历史感，后者则脱离了经济学的考量，虽然具有历史意图，但有时在使用历史资料方面存在缺陷。经济史的衰落也就不足为奇了。

In effect, historians abolished poverty by the simple device of taking it off the agenda. Poverty, however, has not been eliminated. On the contrary, the problem has deepened. Much of Africa has failed to achieve any growth in per capita incomes since 1960; some countries have seen incomes decline. ${}^8\mathrm{At}$${}^8\mathrm{At}$^(8)At{ }^{8} \mathrm{At} the close of the twentieth century, the average life expectancy of a child born in sub-Saharan Africa in 1980 was only 48 years; a typical African mother had only a 30 per cent chance of seeing all her children survive to the age of five; daily calorie intake was only 70 per cent of that of Latin America and East Asia. It is no wonder that The Economist referred to Africa in 2000 as ‘the hopeless continent’ that would never escape recurring crises unless it developed, among other qualities, a broad and sturdy civic consciousness to
实际上，历史学家通过将贫困从议程中删除这一简单手段，消除了贫困。然而，贫困并没有消除。恰恰相反，这个问题更加严重了。自 1960 年以来，非洲大部分地区的人均收入没有实现任何增长；一些国家的收入出现了下降。 ${}^8\mathrm{At}$${}^8\mathrm{At}$^(8)At{ }^{8} \mathrm{At} 20世纪末，1980年撒哈拉以南非洲地区出生儿童的平均预期寿命只有48岁；一个典型的非洲母亲只有30%的机会看到她所有的孩子活到5岁；每日卡路里摄入量只有拉丁美洲和东亚的70%。难怪《经济学家》在 2000 年将非洲称为 "无望的大陆"，除非非洲发展出广泛而坚固的公民意识，否则将永远无法摆脱反复出现的危机。

control tribal rivalries, corruption and civil war. ${}^9$${}^9$^(9){ }^{9} Without a solution to these problems, the journal concluded, ‘the whole world might just give up on the entire continent’. ${}^{10}$${}^{10}$^(10){ }^{10} We do not have to accept this gloomy analysis to see that impoverished societies scattered across the continent are manifestations of human misery, sources of instability, and a moral reproach on a scale even greater than that represented by the slave trade in the nineteenth century.
控制部落争斗、腐败和内战。 ${}^9$${}^9$^(9){ }^{9} 该杂志总结说，如果不解决这些问题，"整个世界可能就会放弃整个非洲大陆"。 ${}^{10}$${}^{10}$^(10){ }^{10} 我们不必接受这种悲观的分析，也可以看到，散布在非洲大陆的贫困社会是人类苦难的表现、不稳定的根源，其道德谴责的程度甚至超过了十九世纪的奴隶贸易。

Africa’s poor economic performance and frequent human disasters have aroused increasing international attention. The slogan ‘Make Poverty History’ was devised to accompany a mass demonstration organized to influence the meeting of the G8 states in Scotland in 2005. ${}^{11}$${}^{11}$^(11){ }^{11} The campaign, led by Bob Geldof, was memorable for helping to raise public awareness of the plight of Africa as well as for holding the biggest rock concert in history. Momentarily, at least, Africa became an issue that disturbed the public conscience and provided a platform for celebrities to shine their light on what the explorer Stanley had labelled ‘the Dark Continent’. Subsequently, Geldof was quoted approvingly on the front cover of the Commission for Africa’s report, Our Common Interest, which appeared in 2005, while Bono contributed a foreword to Jeffrey Sachs’s book The End of Poverty, in the same year. More recently still, the publication in 2007 of Paul Collier’s widely noticed volume, The Bottom Billion, added to the publicity given to the continuing drama of Africa’s poverty. Collier suggested that it is no longer accurate to refer to the underdeveloped countries as if they were homogeneous, as used to be the practice when the term ‘Third World’ was in vogue. The 5 billion people in the underdeveloped world had ceased to share the same predicament. Since the 1980 , global poverty has been reduced for the first time in history. Now 4 billion people inhabit countries that are developing, even though their standards of living remain low. The serious, intractable problem, so Collier claimed, lies with the bottom billion human beings, most of whom live in Africa in conditions that defy established approaches to development.
非洲糟糕的经济表现和频发的人类灾难引起了国际社会越来越多的关注。让贫穷成为历史 "的口号是为配合 2005 年在苏格兰举行的八国集团会议而组织的群众示威活动而提出的。 ${}^{11}$${}^{11}$^(11){ }^{11} 这场由鲍勃-盖尔多夫（Bob Geldof）领导的运动因有助于提高公众对非洲困境的认识以及举办了史上最盛大的摇滚音乐会而令人难忘。至少在一瞬间，非洲成为了一个唤起公众良知的问题，并为名人提供了一个平台，让他们的目光投向被探险家斯坦利称为 "黑暗大陆 "的非洲。随后，2005 年出版的非洲委员会报告《我们的共同利益》封面赞许地引用了盖尔多夫的话，同年，波诺为杰弗里-萨克斯（Jeffrey Sachs）的著作《贫困的终结》（The End of Poverty）撰写了前言。最近，保罗-科利尔（Paul Collier）于 2007 年出版的《最底层的十亿人》（The Bottom Billion）一书广受关注，使非洲贫困问题的持续性更加引人注目。科利尔认为，在 "第三世界 "一词流行时，把不发达国家说成是同类国家的做法已不再准确。不发达世界的 50 亿人口已不再面临相同的困境。自 1980 年以来，全球贫困人口在历史上首次减少。现在，有 40 亿人居住在发展中国家，尽管他们的生活水平仍然很低。科利尔声称，严重而棘手的问题在于最底层的十亿人，其中大多数生活在非洲，他们的生活条件与既定的发展方法背道而驰。

Yet, even this unprecedented degree of publicity has so far failed to shift historians from their current preoccupations with questions that lie outside issues of poverty and development. The continuing neglect of economic history has both weakened the study of African history as a whole and distanced historians from important debates over the formulation of development policy. Nevertheless, historians now have an almost unprecedented opportunity to re-engage with Africa’s economic history. While historians have been preoccupied with topics such as race, gender and identity, other specialists on Africa have turned to history to try to understand the origins of present-day poverty. Economists have been creating a new type of economic history of Africa for at least a decade. Other social scientists have begun to follow their lead. This enterprise is bold and wide-ranging. Its approach to history involves both careful use of secondary sources and heroic leaps of faith; its findings mix originality with rediscoveries of what is already
然而，即使是这种前所未有的宣传程度，迄今也未能使历史学家们从目前对贫困和发展问题之外的问题的关注中走出来。对经济史的持续忽视既削弱了对整个非洲历史的研究，也使历史学家远离了有关制定发展政策的重要辩论。然而，历史学家现在有一个几乎前所未有的机会来重新参与非洲经济史的研究。当历史学家专注于种族、性别和身份等主题时，其他研究非洲的专家则转向历史，试图了解当今贫困的根源。至少十年来，经济学家一直在创造一种新型的非洲经济史。其他社会科学家也开始效仿他们的做法。这项事业大胆而广泛。它的历史研究方法既包括对二手资料的谨慎利用，也包括英雄式的信仰飞跃；它的研究成果既有独创性，也有对已有知识的重新发现。

familiar. Its flaws, however, do not diminish its importance, and it demands what it has yet to receive: the attention of historians themselves.
熟悉。然而，它的缺陷并没有削弱其重要性，它需要的是它尚未得到的关注：历史学家自身的关注。

The new work deals with a variety of themes and periods and is written by different sets of authors. Nevertheless, it shares a common founding assumption: the belief that institutions lie at the heart of development problems. Consequently, it is convenient for present purposes to gather the research undertaken so far under the title ‘new institutional history’. This term is already associated with the approach of economists such as Ronald Coase, and historians such as Douglass North, and has increased its influence on the economics profession during the last half-century. ${}^{12}$${}^{12}$^(12){ }^{12} The label ‘new’ was adopted to distinguish the initiative from the institutional school associated with Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Mitchell and John Commons that flourished early in the twentieth century. ${}^{13}$${}^{13}$^(13){ }^{13} Whereas the old institutionalists sought to incorporate economics and other social sciences into history, their successors aimed at subjecting history to the principles of economics. The endeavour, however, was not simply an exercise in intellectual imperialism. The new institutionalists were also strongly critical of the way mainstream economics had become abstracted from the real world. They planned to change the content and the approach of the subject by introducing themes that had received little attention in orthodox teaching. Initially, the chief focus was on property rights and the firm. Subsequently, the approach widened to include the provision of public goods (such as infrastructure, defence, law, education and health), transactions costs (such as information flows) and social relations, political processes and belief systems. Institutions, broadly conceived, are seen as influences that establish the rules of the economic game by shaping individual and social behaviour. Organizations such as firms, political parties and voluntary associations are the players who operate the system.
新著作涉及不同的主题和时期，由不同的作者撰写。不过，它们都有一个共同的基本假设：认为制度是发展问题的核心。因此，为方便起见，将迄今为止开展的研究集中在 "新制度史 "这一标题下。这一术语已经与罗纳德-科斯（Ronald Coase）等经济学家和道格拉斯-诺斯（Douglass North）等历史学家的研究方法联系在一起，并在过去的半个世纪中对经济学界产生了越来越大的影响。 ${}^{12}$${}^{12}$^(12){ }^{12} 采用 "新 "这一标签，是为了将这一倡议与 20 世纪初兴起的、与索斯坦-维布伦、韦斯利-米切尔和约翰-康芒斯有关的制度学派区分开来。 ${}^{13}$${}^{13}$^(13){ }^{13} 旧制度学派试图将经济学和其他社会科学纳入历史学，而他们的后继者则旨在使历史学服从经济学原则。然而，这一努力并不仅仅是一种知识帝国主义的做法。新制度主义者还对主流经济学脱离现实世界的方式提出了强烈批评。他们计划通过引入正统教学中很少关注的主题来改变该学科的内容和方法。最初，主要关注点是产权和企业。随后，研究方法扩大到包括提供公共产品（如基础设施、国防、法律、教育和卫生）、交易成本（如信息流）以及社会关系、政治进程和信仰体系。广义上的制度被视为通过塑造个人和社会行为来制定经济游戏规则的影响因素。 公司、政党和志愿协会等组织是运作这一系统的参与者。

The perspective is evidently one that, in principle, is congenial to historians because it extends beyond the narrow focus of any single sub-branch of the subject. In the i980s and i990s, a handful of historians applied the new institutional approach to the history of Africa by exploring topics such as property rights, bargaining theory, credit-protection, rent-seeking and transactions costs. ${}^{14}$${}^{14}$^(14){ }^{14} The latest manifestation of new institutional history,
显然，这种视角原则上对历史学家是有利的，因为它超越了任何单一分支学科的狭隘视角。在 20 世纪 90 年代和 90 年代，少数历史学家将新制度方法应用于非洲历史，探讨了产权、讨价还价理论、信贷保护、寻租和交易成本等主题。 ${}^{14}$${}^{14}$^(14){ }^{14} 新制度史的最新表现、

however, has been drawn to Africa by the limited success of orthodox development theory and the deepening problem of poverty in the continent. When Patrick Manning surveyed the state of African economic history in 1987, he observed, correctly, that the World Bank and associated economists believed that history, or at least the slice of history that was relevant to development policy, began in 1960, Africa’s year of independence. ${}^{15}$${}^{15}$^(15){ }^{15} This date was the starting point of the highly influential Berg Report, published in 1981, which criticized the interventionist policies adopted by African governments and recommended market-driven measures of the type that were gaining influence in the developed world at that time. ${}^{16}$${}^{16}$^(16){ }^{16} These measures were applied to Africa through programmes of ‘structural adjustment’ that became summarized, colloquially, as ‘getting prices right’. ${}^{17}$${}^{17}$^(17){ }^{17} The orthodoxy of the day took little account of the innovative work of scholars such as Robert Bates, Sara Berry and Patrick Manning, who were already exploring, in different ways, the relationship between history, institutions and development. ${}^{18}$${}^{18}$^(18){ }^{18}
然而，正统发展理论的有限成功和非洲大陆日益加深的贫困问题吸引了经济学家们来到非洲。帕特里克-曼宁（Patrick Manning）于1987年对非洲经济史的现状进行了调查，他正确地指出，世界银行和相关经济学家认为，历史，或者至少是与发展政策相关的那部分历史，始于1960年，即非洲独立之年。 ${}^{15}$${}^{15}$^(15){ }^{15} 这个日期是 1981 年发表的极具影响力的《伯格报告》的起点，该报告批评了非洲各国政府采取的干预政策，并建议采取当时在发达国家影响日益扩大的市场驱动型措施。 ${}^{16}$${}^{16}$^(16){ }^{16} 这些措施是通过 "结构调整 "计划在非洲实施的，通俗地概括为 "理顺价格"。 ${}^{17}$${}^{17}$^(17){ }^{17} 当时的正统观念很少考虑到罗伯特-贝茨、萨拉-贝里和帕特里克-曼宁等学者的创新工作，他们已经在以不同的方式探索历史、制度和发展之间的关系。 ${}^{18}$${}^{18}$^(18){ }^{18}

Attitudes began to change, however, as experience revealed the limits to market solutions. As Africa’s ‘growth tragedy’ deepened, development
然而，随着经验表明市场解决方案的局限性，人们的态度开始发生变化。随着非洲 "增长悲剧 "的加深，发展
slave trade’, American Historical Review, 104 (1999), 332-55; Lovejoy and Richardson, ‘“This horrid hole”: royal authority, commerce and credit at Bonny, 1690-1840’, Fournal of African History, 45 (2004), 363-92. The best guide and fullest contribution to this literature is Gareth Austin, Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana : From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956 (Rochester NY, 2005).
奴隶贸易"，《美国历史评论》，104（1999 年），332-55；Lovejoy 和 Richardson，""这个可怕的洞"：1690-1840 年邦尼的王权、商业和信贷"，《非洲历史杂志》，45（2004 年），363-92。Gareth Austin, Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana : From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956 (Rochester NY, 2005)是对这一文献的最佳指南和最全面的贡献。
${}^{15}$${}^{15}$^(15){ }^{15} Manning, ‘Prospects for African economic history’; Manning, ‘African economic growth and the public sector: lessons from historical statistics of Cameroon’, African Economic History, 19 (1990-1), 135-70, is a model demonstration of the flaws that arise from poorly based historical assumptions. A broader view from the same standpoint is A. G. Hopkins, ‘The World Bank in Africa: historical reflections on the African present’, World Development, 14 (1986), $1473-87$$1473-87$1473-871473-87.
${}^{15}$${}^{15}$^(15){ }^{15} Manning，"非洲经济史的前景"；Manning，"非洲经济增长与公共部门：喀麦隆历史统计数据的教训"，《非洲经济史》，19 (1990-1)，135-70。A. G. Hopkins，"世界银行在非洲：对非洲现状的历史反思"，《世界发展》，14 (1986)， $1473-87$$1473-87$1473-871473-87 。
${}^{16}$${}^{16}$^(16){ }^{16} World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (New York, 1981).
${}^{16}$${}^{16}$^(16){ }^{16} 世界银行，《加速撒哈拉以南非洲的发展》（纽约，1981 年）。
${}^{17}$${}^{17}$^(17){ }^{17} The literature on structural adjustment is now vast. Accessible guides include: David E. Sahn, Paul A. Dorosch and Stephen D. Younger, Structural Adjustment Reconsidered: Economic Policy and Poverty in Africa (Cambridge, 1997); and Giles Mohan, Ed Brown, Bob Williams and Alfred B. Zach-Williams, Structural Adjustment: Theory, Practice and Impacts (London, 2000). An evaluation with a strong historical dimension is Celestin Monga, ‘Commodities, Mercedes Benz, and structural adjustment: an episode in West Africa’s economic history’, in Emmanuel K. Akyeampong (ed.), Themes in West Africa’s History (Oxford, 2006), 227-64. For a broader view of the evolution of development thinking in Africa, see Douglas Rimmer, ’ Learning about economic development from Africa’, African Affairs, 102 (2003), 469-91.
${}^{17}$${}^{17}$^(17){ }^{17} 目前，有关结构调整的文献浩如烟海。可查阅的指南包括David E. Sahn, Paul A. Dorosch and Stephen D. Younger, Structural Adjustment Reconsidered：非洲的经济政策与贫困》（剑桥，1997 年）；以及 Giles Mohan、Ed Brown、Bob Williams 和 Alfred B. Zach-Williams，《结构调整：理论、实践和影响》（伦敦，2000 年）。Celestin Monga，"商品、奔驰和结构调整：西非经济史上的一个插曲"，载于 Emmanuel K. Akyeampong（编），《西非历史主题》（牛津，2006 年），第 227-64 页。关于非洲发展思想演变的更广泛观点，见 Douglas Rimmer，"从非洲学习经济发展"，《非洲事务》，102 (2003)，469-91。
${}^{18}$${}^{18}$^(18){ }^{18} Representative examples include: Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policy (Berkeley, 1981); Bates, Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa (Cambridge, 1983); Bates, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York, 2001); Sara S. Berry, Fathers Work for Their Sons: Accumulation, Mobility and Class Formation in an Extended Yoruba Community (Berkeley, 1985); Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison, 1993); Chiefs Know Their Boundaries: Essays on Property, Power, and the Past in Asante, I896-I996 (Oxford, 2001); Manning, Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth; Manning, ‘The slave trade: the formal demography of a global system’, Social Science History, 14 (1990), 255-79. Robert Szereszewski, Structural Changes in the Economy of Ghana, I896-I9II (London, 1965), though not strongly institutional in orientation, should also be mentioned as a pioneering (and now unjustly neglected) account of structural economic change.
${}^{18}$${}^{18}$^(18){ }^{18} 具有代表性的例子包括Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa：农业政策的政治基础》（伯克利，1981 年）；贝茨：《非洲农村政治经济学论文集》（剑桥，1983 年）；贝茨：《繁荣与暴力：Bates, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York, 2001); Sara S. Berry, Fathers Work for Their Sons：一个扩展的约鲁巴社区的积累、流动和阶级形成》（伯克利，1985 年）；贝里，《没有永久的条件：撒哈拉以南非洲土地变化的社会动态》（麦迪逊，1993 年）；《酋长知道他们的边界：Essays on Property, Power, and the Past in Asante, I896-I996 (Oxford, 2001); Manning, Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth; Manning, 'The slave trade: the formal demography of a global system', Social Science History, 14 (1990), 255-79.Robert Szereszewski，Structural Changes in the Economy of Ghana，I896-I9II（伦敦，1965 年），虽然没有强烈的制度取向，但作为对经济结构性变化的开创性（现在被不公正地忽视了）论述，也值得一提。
experts were prompted to reconsider the role of public agencies and the political process in general. By the 1990s, a new catch-phrase, ‘bringing the state back in’, had come into vogue. ${}^{19}$${}^{19}$^(19){ }^{19} The scope of development policy widened to incorporate what became known as ‘governance’, and policy recommendations allowed institutions and organizations to come to the fore. Some specialists, looking for fresh inspiration, even suggested that the experience of East Asia might be more relevant to Africa than that of the United States. ${}^{20}$${}^{20}$^(20){ }^{20}
这促使专家们重新考虑公共机构和整个政治进程的作用。到 20 世纪 90 年代，"让国家重新参与 "这一新的口号开始流行。 ${}^{19}$${}^{19}$^(19){ }^{19} 发展政策的范围扩大了，纳入了所谓的 "治理"，政策建议使机构和组织得以脱颖而出。一些专家为了寻找新的灵感，甚至提出东亚的经验可能比美国的经验更适合非洲。 ${}^{20}$${}^{20}$^(20){ }^{20}

The prominence attached to the role of institutions enabled the new economic history of Africa to claim the attention of development specialists. ‘Good’ institutions, as the literature calls them, matter because they are crucial to providing incentives for investment, which is essential for development. The presence of inappropriate or weak institutions, on the other hand, creates uncertainty among potential investors because it increases the risk of expropriation by governments and elites, distorts public investment by directing it to political ends, encourages corruption and promotes the likelihood of civil strife. The new research programme begins with the hypothesis that institutional variables are more significant than other variables in explaining development. As applied to Africa, the hypothesis further assumes that institutional change is gradual. This assumption calls for historical investigation because current institutions are the product of a past that may extend beyond the short period of colonial rule into precolonial history and even into prehistory. The principal technique, cross-country regression analysis, aims to measure the relative weights of the causes of the problem that needs to be explained. ${}^{21}$${}^{21}$^(21){ }^{21}
对机构作用的重视使非洲新经济史得到了发展专家的关注。文献中所说的 "良好的 "制度之所以重要，是因为它们对于激励投资至关重要，而投资对于发展至关重要。另一方面，不恰当或薄弱的制度会给潜在投资者带来不确定性，因为这会增加政府和精英征用土地的风险，扭曲公共投资，将其导向政治目的，助长腐败，并增加内乱的可能性。新的研究计划首先提出了一个假设，即在解释发展问题时，制度变量比其他变量更为重要。在非洲，这一假设进一步假定，制度变革是渐进的。这一假设要求进行历史调查，因为当前的制度是过去的产物，可能超越殖民统治的短暂时期，进入殖民前历史，甚至史前时期。主要技术是跨国回归分析，目的是衡量需要解释的问题的原因的相对权重。 ${}^{21}$${}^{21}$^(21){ }^{21}

The emphasis on institutions has to contend with a number of alternatives, the most prominent of which stresses the primacy of initial conditions, notably geography, climate and disease. ${}^{22}$${}^{22}$^(22){ }^{22} There are also important new lines of enquiry in development economics that are institutional in orientation but, so far, lack a prominent historical dimension. The work of Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Michael Kramer and Christopher Udry, for example, has greatly elevated the status of micro-economic studies that test the effectiveness of policies derived from macro-economic
对制度的强调必须与一些替代方案相抗衡，其中最突出的是强调初始条件的重要性，特别是地理、气候和疾病。 ${}^{22}$${}^{22}$^(22){ }^{22} 发展经济学中还有一些重要的新研究方向，它们以制度为导向，但迄今为止缺乏突出的历史维度。例如，Abhijit Banerjee、Esther Duflo、Michael Kramer 和 Christopher Udry 的工作大大提升了微观经济研究的地位，这些研究检验了从宏观经济中得出的政策的有效性。

assumptions. ${}^{23}$${}^{23}$^(23){ }^{23} The work reviewed here, however, justifies the priority it receives not only because it has done so much to inspire the new debate on Africa’s continuing poverty but also because it has led the way in making historical evidence central to contemporary issues. The propositions advanced by the new economic history of Africa are well illustrated by the two most influential contributions made so far. The authors are noted economists who are closely involved with development issues and are connected to organizations that influence policy-making. ${}^{24}$${}^{24}$^(24){ }^{24} Their theories have now generated an extensive literature among social scientists. ${}^{25}$${}^{25}$^(25){ }^{25}
假设。 ${}^{23}$${}^{23}$^(23){ }^{23} 然而，本文所评述的工作理应得到优先考虑，这不仅是因为它在激发有关非洲持续贫困问题的新讨论方面做出了巨大贡献，而且还因为它在使历史证据成为当代问题的核心方面发挥了带头作用。迄今为止最具影响力的两部著作充分说明了非洲新经济史提出的主张。这两本书的作者都是著名的经济学家，他们与发展问题密切相关，并与影响决策的组织有联系。 ${}^{24}$${}^{24}$^(24){ }^{24} 他们的理论现已在社会科学家中产生了大量文献。 ${}^{25}$${}^{25}$^(25){ }^{25}

The boldest and most comprehensive historical argument advanced by the new institutionalists is that formulated by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson in 2002. ${}^{26}$${}^{26}$^(26){ }^{26} The central claim arising from their research is that many of the countries colonized by European powers, including Africa, were relatively rich in 1500 but have now become relatively poor. ${}^{27}$${}^{27}$^(27){ }^{27} The authors recognize the problem of securing adequate statistical data to measure income levels in diverse parts of the world in 1500 . The solution they propose adopts two conjoined proxies for relative prosperity: population density and levels of urbanization. The article then assembles the historical information on both proxies and converts them into measurable indices. The reversal of fortune, as they term it, cannot be explained by geographical and other environmental influences because these are comparatively persistent features of the natural endowment. The reversal is to be understood instead as a consequence of the varied character of European expansion overseas and the differential effect it had on institutions.
新制度主义者提出的最大胆、最全面的历史论点是达龙-阿西莫格鲁、西蒙-约翰逊和詹姆斯-鲁滨逊在 2002 年提出的论点。 ${}^{26}$${}^{26}$^(26){ }^{26} 他们研究的核心主张是，包括非洲在内的许多欧洲列强殖民地国家在 1500 年时相对富裕，但现在却变得相对贫穷。 ${}^{27}$${}^{27}$^(27){ }^{27} 作者认识到，要获得足够的统计数据来衡量 1500 年世界不同地区的收入水平是一个难题。他们提出的解决方案是采用两个共同的代用指标来衡量相对繁荣程度：人口密度和城市化水平。文章随后汇集了这两个代用指标的历史信息，并将其转换为可测量的指数。他们所说的财富逆转，不能用地理和其他环境影响来解释，因为这些都是自然禀赋中相对持久的特征。相反，这种逆转应被理解为欧洲向海外扩张的不同特点及其对制度产生的不同影响的结果。
${}^{23}$${}^{23}$^(23){ }^{23} See, for example, Abhijit V. Banerjee, ‘The two poverties’, Nordic fournal of Political Economy, 26 (2001), 129-41; Esther Duflo, ‘Field experiments in development economics’, in Richard Blundell, Whitney Newey and Torsten Persson (eds.), Advances in Economics and Econometrics (Cambridge, 2006), 322-48; Rohinde Pande and Christopher Udry, ‘Institutions and development: a view from below’, in Blundell, Newey and Persson (eds.), Advances in Economics, 349-412; Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennester and Michael Kremer, Using Randomization in Development Economics: A Toolkit (NBER Technical Working Paper 333, 2006).
经济学与计量经济学进展》（剑桥，2006 年），322-48；Rohinde Pande 和 Christopher Udry，《制度与发展：从下往上看》，载于 Blundell、Newey 和 Persson（编），《经济学进展》，349-412；Esther Duflo、Rachel Glennester 和 Michael Kremer，《在发展经济学中使用随机化》：工具包》（NBER 技术工作文件 333，2006 年）。
${}^{24}$${}^{24}$^(24){ }^{24} Such as the World Bank and the US National Bureau of Economic Research, which describes itself as ‘the nation’s leading non-profit economic research organization’.
${}^{24}$${}^{24}$^(24){ }^{24} 如世界银行和美国国家经济研究局，后者自称是 "美国主要的非营利性经济研究机构"。
${}^{25}$${}^{25}$^(25){ }^{25} In addition to the specific citations that follow, see the ‘Symposium on institutions and economic performance’, Economics of Transition, 13 (2005), 421-572.
${}^{25}$${}^{25}$^(25){ }^{25} 除以下具体引文外，请参见 "制度与经济绩效专题讨论会"，《转型经济学》，13 (2005)，421-572。
${}^{26}$${}^{26}$^(26){ }^{26} Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, ‘Reversal of fortune: geography and institutions in the making of the modern world income distribution’, Quarterly Fournal of Economics, 17 (2002), 1231-94; Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, ‘The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation’, American Economic Review, 91 (2001), 1369-401. Earlier versions of both articles appeared as Working Papers that stimulated discussion before their formal publication.
${}^{26}$${}^{26}$^(26){ }^{26} Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, "Reversal of fortune: geography and institutions in the making of the modern world income distribution", Quarterly Fournal of Economics, 17 (2002), 1231-94; Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, "The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation", American Economic Review, 91 (2001), 1369-401.这两篇文章的早期版本均作为工作文件发表，在正式出版前引发了讨论。
${}^{27}$${}^{27}$^(27){ }^{27} The authors are careful to explain that ‘by economic prosperity or income per capita in 1500 , we do not refer to the economic or social conditions or the welfare of the masses but to a measure of the total production in the economy relative to the number of inhabitants’. Similarly, the reversal of fortune refers to ‘changes in relative incomes across different areas and does not imply that the initial inhabitants of, for example, New Zealand or North America themselves became relatively rich’. Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, ‘Reversal of fortune’, 1232 n.i.
${}^{27}$${}^{27}$^(27){ }^{27} 作者谨慎地解释说，"我们所说的 1500 年经济繁荣或人均收入，并不是指经济或社会状况或大众的福利，而是指相对于居民人数的经济总产量的衡量标准"。同样，财富逆转指的是'不同地区相对收入的变化，并不意味着新西兰或北美等地最初的居民本身变得相对富有'。Acemoglu、Johnson 和 Robinson，"财富逆转"，1232 n.i。

The argument derived from this evidence can be summarized as follows. Parts of the world such as the Americas and Australasia, which were relatively poor in 1500, tended also to be sparsely populated (even before European influences were felt) and to have low levels of urbanization. These conditions enabled Europeans to settle and install appropriate institutions that provided incentives for investment. Areas such as Africa and Asia, on the other hand, which were relatively rich in 1500 , inhibited white settlement. Their larger populations could resist European encroachment and also occupied epidemiological zones that imposed a high rate of mortality on Europeans. In such regions the European presence was either marginal, in which case unproductive institutions remained in place, or took the form of colonial rule, which introduced extractive types of economic control that were poorly suited to long-term development. The Atlantic slave trade is a particularly telling case: it reduced the population from a level that was previously relatively high and encouraged the development of institutions that were inimical to long-term growth. The greater part of the reversal, nevertheless, occurred in the nineteenth century, when favoured parts of the world had established appropriate institutions that could take advantage of the technological and other innovations of the period. Elsewhere, unproductive institutions, once established, tended to persist. Nevertheless, institutions can be long-standing without being immutable. The task of policy is to adapt inappropriate institutions to present development needs.
从这些证据中得出的论点可以概括如下。美洲和澳大拉西亚等地区在 1500 年时相对贫穷，这些地区往往人口稀少（甚至在欧洲影响出现之前），城市化水平较低。这些条件使欧洲人能够定居下来，并建立适当的机构，为投资提供激励。另一方面，非洲和亚洲等 1500 年前相对富饶的地区则抑制了白人的定居。这些地区的人口较多，能够抵御欧洲人的入侵，而且还占据着流行病高发区，给欧洲人带来了很高的死亡率。在这些地区，欧洲人的存在要么是边缘化的，在这种情况下，非生产性的机构仍然存在，要么采取殖民统治的形式，引入了不适合长期发展的榨取式经济控制。大西洋奴隶贸易是一个特别有说服力的案例：它使人口从以前相对较高的水平上减少，并鼓励了不利于长期发展的制度的发展。然而，大部分的逆转发生在十九世纪，当时世界上的有利地区已经建立了适当的制度，可以利用当时的技术和其他创新。在其他地方，非生产性机构一旦建立，往往会长期存在。然而，制度可以长期存在，但并非一成不变。政策的任务是使不适当的体制适应当前的发展需要。

The reversal of fortune thesis has stimulated further contributions by social scientists. One set of comments focuses on the methodology underlying the exercise. The key assumption made by Acemoglu and his colleagues is that settler mortality can be used as an instrumental variable because it is sufficiently independent of other variables to carry causal weight in explaining differing levels of prosperity in the ex-colonial world today. ${}^{28}$${}^{28}$^(28){ }^{28} The merit of instrumental variables is that they are uncontaminated by the problem that needs to be explained and so are capable of overcoming common estimation difficulties, such as cross-correlation and reverse causation. Settler mortality qualifies because it explains why Europeans populated some colonies rather than others in the era before the medical revolution of the late nineteenth century, but has long ceased to have a direct effect on current levels of wealth in ex-colonial states. The causal link explaining the reversal of fortunes is provided indirectly by the varied quality of the institutions that arose from the distribution of European settlement throughout the world. This variation determined the strength of property rights, the concomitant risk of capital expropriation, and ultimately the level of economic development.
财富论的逆转激发了社会科学家的进一步贡献。其中一组评论集中于这一研究的方法论。阿斯莫格鲁和他的同事们提出的关键假设是，定居者的死亡率可以作为一个工具变量，因为它与其他变量有足够的独立性，在解释当今前殖民地世界不同的繁荣程度时具有因果影响力。 ${}^{28}$${}^{28}$^(28){ }^{28} 工具变量的优点在于它们不受需要解释的问题的影响，因此能够克服常见的估计困难，如交叉相关和反向因果关系。定居者死亡率符合条件，因为它解释了为什么在 19 世纪末医学革命之前的时代，欧洲人在一些殖民地而不是其他殖民地定居，但它早已不再对前殖民地国家当前的财富水平产生直接影响。欧洲人在世界各地的定居分布所产生的制度质量参差不齐，这间接提供了解释财富逆转的因果联系。这种差异决定了产权的强度、随之而来的资本征用风险以及最终的经济发展水平。

The key assumption has attracted a good deal of criticism. It has been pointed out that settler mortality is a weak instrumental variable: it identifies
这一关键假设招致了大量批评。有人指出，定居者死亡率是一个微弱的工具变量：它确定了

an external source of variation in the problem that needs explaining but may not itself account for a large part of the cause. ${}^{29}$${}^{29}$^(29){ }^{29} This thought has been pursued by Patrick O’Brien, whose comprehensive analysis of the historical data shows that the potential for economic development in colonial and independent states in Asia and Africa between 1815 and 1948 depended far less on the type of government present than on a multiplicity of other influences, notably natural and human resources and access to international markets. ${}^{30}$${}^{30}$^(30){ }^{30} An alternative approach has reasserted the importance of the geographical environment. ${}^{31}$${}^{31}$^(31){ }^{31} The claim here is not that geography creates an implacable destiny, but that its influence, too, is felt through institutions as well as, in some formulations, directly. Different resource endowments encourage different institutions: plantations may be favoured in one region, smallholdings in another; each tends to be associated with distinctive sociopolitical formations. ${}^{32}$${}^{32}$^(32){ }^{32} Some scholars have proceeded to devise alternative measures that expand the list of desirable institutions; others have considered how to rank the contributions that have been made to development by different kinds of institutions. To the extent that there is agreement on the state of the debate, it is accepted that institutions are entwined with one another and with non-institutional influences in ways that cannot usefully be disentangled by referring to first principles or assumed best practice, but need to be placed in specific contexts that reflect the particularities, including the history, of each case. ${}^{33}$${}^{33}$^(33){ }^{33}
问题中需要解释的外部变化来源，但其本身可能并不占大部分原因。 ${}^{29}$${}^{29}$^(29){ }^{29} 帕特里克-奥布赖恩（Patrick O'Brien）一直坚持这一观点，他对历史数据的全面分析表明，1815-1948年间，亚洲和非洲殖民地国家和独立国家的经济发展潜力远非取决于政府类型，而是取决于其他多种影响因素，特别是自然资源、人力资源和国际市场准入。 ${}^{30}$${}^{30}$^(30){ }^{30} 另一种方法重申了地理环境的重要性。 ${}^{31}$${}^{31}$^(31){ }^{31} 这里所说的并不是地理环境造成了不可改变的命运，而是说地理环境的影响也是通过制度来体现的，在某些表述中也是直接体现的。不同的资源禀赋鼓励不同的制度：种植园可能在一个地区受到青睐，而小农户则在另一个地区受到青睐；每种制度往往都与独特的社会政治形式相关联。 ${}^{32}$${}^{32}$^(32){ }^{32} 一些学者进而制定了替代措施，扩大了理想制度的清单；另一些学者则考虑了如何对不同类型的制度对发展所做的贡献进行排序。在就辩论现状达成一致意见的范围内，人们都认为，制度与制度之间以及制度以外的影响因素之间存在着纠缠不清的关系，这些关系无法通过参照第一原则或假定的最佳做法来有效地加以区分，而是需要放在具体的背景中，以反映每种情况的特殊性，包括历史。 ${}^{33}$${}^{33}$^(33){ }^{33}

A further methodological problem arises from the application of crosscountry regression analysis. ${}^{34}$${}^{34}$^(34){ }^{34} This technique has established itself as both a valuable and a controversial econometric tool. It holds out the promise of
另一个方法问题来自于跨国回归分析的应用。 ${}^{34}$${}^{34}$^(34){ }^{34} 这项技术既是一种有价值的计量经济学工具，也是一种有争议的计量经济学工具。它有望
${}^{29}$${}^{29}$^(29){ }^{29} Dani Rodrik, Arvind Subramanian and Francesco Trebbi, ‘Institutions rule: the primacy of institutions over geography and integration in economic development’, Fournal of Economic Growth, 9 (2004), 131-65.
${}^{29}$${}^{29}$^(29){ }^{29} Dani Rodrik、Arvind Subramanian 和 Francesco Trebbi，《制度统治：经济发展中制度优先于地理和一体化》，《经济增长期刊》，9 (2004)，131-65。
${}^{30}$${}^{30}$^(30){ }^{30} O’Brien, ‘Colonies in a globalizing economy, 1815-1948’, in Barry Giles and William R. Thompson (eds.), Globalization and Global History (Hoboken, 2006), 224-65.
${}^{30}$${}^{30}$^(30){ }^{30} O'Brien, "Colonies in a globalizing economy, 1815-1948", in Barry Giles and William R. Thompson (eds.), Globalization and Global History (Hoboken, 2006), 224-65.
${}^{31}$${}^{31}$^(31){ }^{31} See especially, John W. McArthur and Jeffrey D. Sachs, Institutions and Geography: Comment on Acemoglu, fohnson and Robinson (2000) (NBER Working Paper 81 14, 2001); Sachs, Tropical Underdevelopment; Sachs, Institutions Don’t Rule; William Easterly and Ross Levine, Tropics, Germs and Crops: How Endowments Infuence Economic Development (NBER Working Paper 9106, 2002); Ola Olsson, ‘Geography and institutions: a review of plausible and implausible linkages’, Working Papers in Economics (Department of Economics, Goteborg University), 106 (2003).
${}^{31}$${}^{31}$^(31){ }^{31} 尤其见 John W. McArthur 和 Jeffrey D. Sachs，《制度与地理》：Comment on Acemoglu, fohnson and Robinson (2000) (NBER Working Paper 81 14, 2001); Sachs, Tropical Underdevelopment; Sachs, Institutions Don't Rule; William Easterly and Ross Levine, Tropics, Germs and Crops：How Endowments Infuence Economic Development (NBER Working Paper 9106, 2002); Ola Olsson, "Geography and institutions: a review of plausible and implausible linkages", Working Papers in Economics (Department of Economics, Goteborg University), 106 (2003).
${}_{32}$${}_{32}$_(32){ }_{32} Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Stanley L. Engerman have elaborated this point in a series of important studies: ’ Institutions, factor endowments, and paths of development in the New World’, Fournal of Economic Perspectives, 14 (2000), 217-32; Institutional and NonInstitutional Explanations of Economic Differences (NBER Working Paper 9989, 2003); Colonialism, Inequality and Long-Run Paths of Development (NBER Working Paper 11057, 2005).
${}_{32}$${}_{32}$_(32){ }_{32} Kenneth L. Sokoloff 和 Stanley L. Engerman 在一系列重要研究中阐述了这一点：《制度、要素禀赋和新世界的发展道路》，《经济展望杂志》，14 (2000)，217-32；《经济差异的制度和非制度解释》（NBER 工作文件 9989，2003 年）；《殖民主义、不平等和长期发展道路》（NBER 工作文件 11057，2005 年）。
${}^{33}$${}^{33}$^(33){ }^{33} Valuable examples of putting these principles into practice are the studies of land tenure by Pande and Udry, ‘Institutions and development: a view from below’; and Catherine Boone, ‘Property and constitutional order: land tenure reform and the future of the African state’, African Affairs, 106 (2007), 557-86. Pande and Udry deal with Ghana; Boone with the Ivory Coast, Uganda, South Africa and Tanzania. See also Sara Berry, ‘Debating the land question in Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44 (2002), 638-68, which ought to be mandatory reading for development planners.
${}^{33}$${}^{33}$^(33){ }^{33} 将这些原则付诸实践的宝贵范例是 Pande 和 Udry 对土地使用权的研究，"制度与发展：从下往上看"；以及 Catherine Boone，"财产与宪法秩序：土地使用权改革与非洲国家的未来"，《非洲事务》，106（2007），557-86。Pande 和 Udry 讨论的是加纳；Boone 讨论的是象牙海岸、乌干达、南非和坦桑尼亚。另见 Sara Berry，《非洲土地问题辩论》，《社会与历史比较研究》，44 (2002)，638-68，该书应成为发展规划者的必读书。
${}^{34}$${}^{34}$^(34){ }^{34} Two balanced accounts are: Ross Levine and David Renelt, ‘A sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions’, American Economic Review, 82 (1992), 942-63;
${}^{34}$${}^{34}$^(34){ }^{34} 两种平衡的说法是：Ross Levine 和 David Renelt，"A sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions"，American Economic Review，82 (1992)，942-63；
making global comparisons of the effects of policy on development, but it carries risks in addition to the standard warnings that accompany the use of linear and multiple regressions. One danger is that comparisons drawn between countries as different as, for example, India and Chad enlarge the causal possibilities and raise the chances of discounting differences that are deemed not to fit the purpose of the investigation. This risk may be countered by undertaking detailed country-based studies, but this is an arduous corrective that is not possible in a global enquiry of the kind mounted by Acemoglu and his co-authors. A second assumption, which is of particular concern to historians, is that differences of time are of little consequence, or, more precisely, that what happens between the starting point and the end point of the investigation is insufficiently important to alter the design of the experiment. If the period in question is short, the assumption may still hold. If it extends over five centuries, as it does in Acemoglu’s study, doubts arise as to whether significant temporal changes, as well as spatial differences, are being overlooked. Heroic assumptions can produce striking results, but they can also gain strength at the expense of credibility.
在对政策对发展的影响进行全球比较时，除了使用线性和多重回归的标准警告之外，还存在其他风险。其中一个风险是，在印度和乍得等不同国家之间进行比较，会扩大因果关系的可能性，并有可能忽略那些被认为不符合调查目的的差异。这种风险可以通过基于国家的详细研究来应对，但这是一项艰巨的纠正工作，在阿斯莫格鲁和他的合著者发起的这种全球性调查中是不可能实现的。历史学家特别关注的第二个假设是，时间差没有什么影响，或者更准确地说，在调查的起点和终点之间发生的事情不够重要，不足以改变实验的设计。如果所涉时间较短，这一假设可能仍然成立。如果像阿西莫格鲁的研究那样，时间跨度长达五个世纪，那么人们就会怀疑重大的时间变化以及空间差异是否被忽视了。英雄式的假设可以产生惊人的结果，但也可能以牺牲可信度为代价获得力量。

Following the methodological issues, economists have made two important historical contributions to the reversal of fortune thesis that bear directly on the case of Africa. Ola Olsson has pointed out that bundling all colonialism into one undifferentiated period from 1500 to 1950 glosses over the considerable disparity between mercantilist and modern forms of imperialism. ${}^{35}$${}^{35}$^(35){ }^{35} In the first phase, he argues, ‘good’ institutions scarcely existed, even in Europe, so could scarcely have been an option overseas. In reality, no choice between productive and extractive institutions was available in 1500. By the late nineteenth century, however, both options were present; by then, too, medical advances had removed some of the constraints on European settlement, and disease was no longer the important influence on colonial policy towards Africa that it had been earlier. Olsson concludes that the two eras were so different that their trajectories cannot be driven by one variable, settler mortality. Instead, they initiated two paths of development, and hence created two institutional legacies.
继方法论问题之后，经济学家对 "命运逆转论 "做出了两项重要的历史性贡献，直接影响到非洲的情况。奥拉-奥尔松指出，将所有殖民主义捆绑在一个从1500年到1950年的无差别时期，掩盖了重商主义帝国主义与现代帝国主义之间的巨大差异。 ${}^{35}$${}^{35}$^(35){ }^{35} 他认为，在第一阶段，"好的 "制度几乎不存在，即使在欧洲也是如此，因此在海外几乎不可能有这样的选择。实际上，在 1500 年，生产性机构和榨取性机构之间没有选择。然而，到了 19 世纪末，两种选择都出现了；到那时，医学进步也消除了欧洲人定居的一些限制，疾病不再像早先那样对非洲殖民政策产生重要影响。奥尔森的结论是，这两个时代是如此不同，以至于它们的轨迹不能由一个变量--定居者死亡率--来驱动。相反，这两个时代开启了两条发展道路，并因此创造了两种制度遗产。

Olsson’s analysis of these legacies leads him to hypothesize that the duration of colonial rule had a positive effect on institutional quality but a negative effect on the ability of independent states with a long history of colonial subordination to sustain democratic forms of government. Colonies founded during the second wave of imperialism, on the other hand, were likely to have poorer institutions but greater chances of establishing democratic governments. The suggested explanation is that it takes time to establish durable institutions, whereas modern imperialism transmitted ideas of self-determination and civil rights more rapidly and more effectively than its agents intended. According to Olsson, India combines duration with liberal ideals, whereas Africa suffers both from its long contact with Europe,
奥尔森对这些遗产的分析使他提出了这样的假设：殖民统治的持续时间对制度质量有积极影响，但对长期处于殖民从属地位的独立国家维持民主政府的能力有消极影响。另一方面，在帝国主义第二次浪潮期间建立的殖民地，其体制可能较差，但建立民主政府的机会较大。有人提出的解释是，建立持久的制度需要时间，而现代帝国主义传播自决和公民权利的理念比其代理人预期的更迅速、更有效。根据奥尔森的观点，印度将持续时间与自由主义理想相结合，而非洲则由于与欧洲的长期接触而同时受到这两种因素的影响、

which failed to eliminate unproductive institutions, and from the short duration of modern colonial rule, which allowed insufficient time to install modern institutions. As far as Africa is concerned, Olsson’s argument remains in broad agreement with Acemoglu’s to the extent that both concur that colonialism presided over non-productive institutions. However, whereas Acemoglu and his colleagues believe that colonial rule entrenched extractive regimes, Olsson suggests that colonial rulers did not have enough time to dismantle the unproductive institutions that were already in place.
一是殖民主义未能消除非生产性体制，二是现代殖民统治时间短，没有足够的时间建立现代体制。就非洲而言，奥尔森的观点与阿斯莫格鲁的观点基本一致，都认为殖民主义主导了非生产性体制。不过，阿斯莫格鲁及其同事认为殖民统治巩固了榨取性政权，而奥尔森则认为殖民统治者没有足够的时间来废除已经存在的非生产性体制。

The second contribution, by Nathan Nunn, examines Africa’s external slave trades to illustrate the extent of the reversal of fortune suffered by the continent. ${}^{36}$${}^{36}$^(36){ }^{36} Nunn’s starting point follows Acemoglu’s in assuming that levels of economic and social development in Africa before 1500 were similar to those of other ‘relatively prosperous’ regions of the world. The external slave trades installed unproductive, extractive regimes that were perpetuated by colonial rule through land expropriation, compulsory labour and regressive taxes. The countries that are the poorest in Africa today, Nunn claims, are those from which most slaves were taken. Not only that, the slave trades weakened ethnic ties and hindered the growth of broader ethnic identities and the development of large states. In these ways, Africa’s history helps to explain its poor performance after independence. Nunn’s argument, like that of Acemoglu and his co-authors, appears to have much in common with the dependency thesis. However, none of the contributors to the debate about the reversal of fortunes pursues that line of enquiry. The best inference that can be drawn from their analyses is that Africa’s development problem arose, not from the penetration of capitalism, but from the presence of the wrong type of capitalism. ${}^{37}$${}^{37}$^(37){ }^{37}
纳森-纳恩（Nathan Nunn）的第二篇论文研究了非洲的对外奴隶贸易，以说明非洲大陆所遭受的命运逆转的程度。 ${}^{36}$${}^{36}$^(36){ }^{36} 纳恩的出发点与阿西莫格鲁相同，假设非洲在 1500 年前的经济和社会发展水平与世界其他 "相对繁荣 "地区相似。对外奴隶贸易建立了非生产性的、榨取性的制度，殖民统治通过征用土地、强制劳动和累退税使这些制度得以延续。纳恩称，今天非洲最贫穷的国家正是那些奴隶被掳走最多的国家。不仅如此，奴隶贸易还削弱了民族关系，阻碍了更广泛的民族认同和大国的发展。从这些方面来看，非洲的历史有助于解释其独立后的糟糕表现。纳恩的论点与阿斯莫格鲁及其合著者的论点一样，似乎与依附论有许多共同之处。然而，在这场关于命运逆转的辩论中，没有一位撰稿人采用这一思路。从他们的分析中可以得出的最佳推论是，非洲的发展问题并非源于资本主义的渗透，而是源于错误类型的资本主义的存在。 ${}^{37}$${}^{37}$^(37){ }^{37}

Evidently, Acemoglu and his co-authors have advanced a vast thesis that invites far more comment than space allows. Three major issues, however, can be listed here for future discussion. The first issue concerns the data base. Establishing levels of prosperity for Africa in 1500 is a daunting task. ${}^{38}$${}^{38}$^(38){ }^{38} Acemoglu and his co-authors rely on population density as a proxy for prosperity. Elsewhere, they use data on urban populations too, but in the case of Africa they recognize that the evidence for the precolonial era is too sparse to be relied upon. ${}^{39}$${}^{39}$^(39){ }^{39} The population figures they assemble, however, are insufficiently robust to carry the explanatory weight placed on
显然，阿斯莫格鲁和他的合著者提出了一个庞大的论题，需要发表的评论远远超出了篇幅所允许的范围。不过，这里可以列出三个主要问题，供今后讨论。第一个问题涉及数据基础。确定 1500 年非洲的繁荣程度是一项艰巨的任务。 ${}^{38}$${}^{38}$^(38){ }^{38} 艾斯莫格鲁和他的合著者依靠人口密度来代表繁荣程度。在其他地方，他们也使用了城市人口的数据，但就非洲而言，他们认识到前殖民时代的证据过于稀少，无法依赖。 ${}^{39}$${}^{39}$^(39){ }^{39} 然而，他们收集的人口数据不够可靠，不足以承担对人口密度的解释权重。

them. ${}^{40}$${}^{40}$^(40){ }^{40} They are derived from a dated Atlas, which itself compiled the guesses of the day. ${}^{41}$${}^{41}$^(41){ }^{41} Nearly all such estimates are obliged to employ the technique of backward projection, which rests on unreliable colonial censuses and heroic assumptions about growth rates in earlier periods. The fact is that there are few dependable studies of precolonial populations in Africa. Thornton’s remarkable pioneering essay, which used baptism records to estimate the population of the Congo in the seventeenth century, remains unmatched, even though it was published over thirty years ago. ${}^{42}$${}^{42}$^(42){ }^{42} It will remain so until a new generation of researchers decides to tackle the problem anew.
他们。 ${}^{40}$${}^{40}$^(40){ }^{40} 这些数据来源于年代久远的《地图集》，而《地图集》本身就是根据当时的猜测编制而成的。 ${}^{41}$${}^{41}$^(41){ }^{41} 几乎所有此类估算都不得不采用后向推算的方法，这种方法依赖于不可靠的殖民时期人口普查和对早期增长率的大胆假设。事实上，关于非洲殖民前人口的可靠研究并不多。桑顿利用洗礼记录估算了十七世纪刚果的人口数量，这篇杰出的开创性文章虽然发表于三十多年前，但至今仍无与伦比。 ${}^{42}$${}^{42}$^(42){ }^{42} 在新一代研究人员决定重新解决这个问题之前，它将一直如此。

The comparative use of population evidence is equally problematic. Acemoglu and his colleagues include Africa with Asia as being relatively well populated and prosperous in 1500, as opposed to the Americas and Australia, which were sparsely populated and relatively poor. It is hard to justify this grouping on the evidence available. As noted earlier, there are good grounds for supposing that, for the greater part of its history, Africa was in general a land-surplus region, not one that was densely populated, and that the ratio of people to land did not begin to change until the twentieth century. The early history of the Americas and Australia, on the other hand, has been the subject of revisionist research that has greatly increased previous estimates of population levels. In citing Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones’s judgement that precolonial Australia was ‘an unchanging palaeolithic backwater’, ${}^{43}$${}^{43}$^(43){ }^{43} Acemoglu and his colleagues have missed the research of the last thirty years, which has presented an entirely different account of aboriginal history in what became Australia and has caused population estimates for the period shortly before white settlement to be raised from $150,000-300,000$$150,000-300,000$150,000-300,000150,000-300,000 to $1-1\cdot 5$$1-1\cdot 5$1-1*51-1 \cdot 5 million. ${}^{44}$${}^{44}$^(44){ }^{44} The history of the Americas before Columbus has been similarly rewritten to include estimates of the size of the population that reach as high as 100 million, which, if accurate, exceeded the population of Europe. ${}^{45}$${}^{45}$^(45){ }^{45} The point, however, is not to argue that these figures are correct but to suggest that all such figures are extrapolations from limited and shaky data. They ought not to be used to generate statistical results that have the appearance of scientific precision but in reality are little more than guesswork. ${}^{46}$${}^{46}$^(46){ }^{46}
人口证据的比较使用同样存在问题。阿斯莫格鲁和他的同事们将非洲和亚洲列为 1500 年人口相对较多、相对繁荣的地区，而美洲和澳大利亚则是人口稀少、相对贫穷的地区。根据现有证据，很难证明这种分组是合理的。如前所述，我们有充分的理由认为，在非洲历史的大部分时间里，非洲总体上是一个土地过剩的地区，而不是一个人口稠密的地区，人地比例直到 20 世纪才开始发生变化。另一方面，美洲和澳大利亚的早期历史一直是修正主义研究的对象，这些研究大大提高了以前对人口数量的估计。 ${}^{43}$${}^{43}$^(43){ }^{43} 阿斯莫格鲁和他的同事引用了科林-麦克艾维迪（Colin McEvedy）和理查德-琼斯（Richard Jones）的判断，即殖民前的澳大利亚是 "一成不变的旧石器时代落后地区"，但他们忽略了过去三十年的研究，这些研究对后来成为澳大利亚的土著居民的历史做出了完全不同的描述，使白人定居前不久的人口估计数从 $150,000-300,000$$150,000-300,000$150,000-300,000150,000-300,000 百万上升到 $1-1\cdot 5$$1-1\cdot 5$1-1*51-1 \cdot 5 百万。 ${}^{44}$${}^{44}$^(44){ }^{44} 哥伦布之前的美洲历史也同样被改写，对人口规模的估计高达 1 亿，如果准确的话，超过了欧洲的人口。 ${}^{45}$${}^{45}$^(45){ }^{45} 然而，问题的关键并不在于争论这些数字是否正确，而在于指出所有这些数字都是根据有限而不可靠的数据推断出来的。我们不应该用这些数据来得出看似科学精确但实际上不过是猜测的统计结果。 ${}^{46}$${}^{46}$^(46){ }^{46}
in size according to seasons and market days; others were established for defensive purposes and contained a high proportion of cultivators who commuted to their farms.
这些农场的规模根据季节和集市日的不同而变化；还有一些农场是为了防御目的而建立的，其中有很大一部分耕种者往返于农场之间。
${}^{40}$${}^{40}$^(40){ }^{40} Austin provides a fuller appraisal of the frailty of the data bases created by Acemoglu and his co-authors and by Nunn in ‘The “reversal of fortune” thesis’, 5-8.
${}^{40}$${}^{40}$^(40){ }^{40} 奥斯汀在《"命运逆转 "论》第 5-8 页中对阿斯莫格鲁及其合著者和纳恩创建的数据库的脆弱性进行了更全面的评估。
${}^{41}$${}^{41}$^(41){ }^{41} Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population (New York, 1978). Kent G. Deng concludes, with respect to China, that there ‘is not a shred of evidence to support their claims’: ‘Fact or fiction? Re-examination of Chinese premodern populaton statistics’, Working Papers in Economic History (LSE), 76 (2003), 6 n. 2.
${}^{41}$${}^{41}$^(41){ }^{41} Colin McEvedy 和 Richard Jones，《世界人口地图集》（纽约，1978 年）。Kent G. Deng 认为，关于中国，"没有丝毫证据支持他们的说法"：《事实还是虚构？重新审视中国近代以前的人口统计数据"，《经济史工作文件》（伦敦政治经济学院），76（2003 年），6 n. 2。
${}^{42}$${}^{42}$^(42){ }^{42} John Thornton, ‘Demography and history in the kingdom of the Kongo, 1550-1750’, Fournal of African History, 18 (1977), 507-30.
${}^{42}$${}^{42}$^(42){ }^{42} 约翰-桑顿：《金刚王国的人口与历史，1550-1750 年》，《非洲历史杂志》，18（1977 年），507-30 页。
${}^{43}$${}^{43}$^(43){ }^{43} Acemoglu et al., ‘Reversal of fortune’, 1256.
${}^{43}$${}^{43}$^(43){ }^{43} Acemoglu 等人，《命运的逆转》，第 1256 页。
${}^{44}$${}^{44}$^(44){ }^{44} Noel G. Butlin, Our Original Aggression: Aboriginal Populations of Southeastern Australia, I788-I850 (Sydney, 1983); Butlin, Economics and the Dreamtimes: A Hypothetical History (Cambridge, I993); Derek J. Mulvaney and John P. White (eds.), Australians to 1877 (Sydney, i987).
${}^{44}$${}^{44}$^(44){ }^{44} Noel G. Butlin, Our Original Aggression：澳大利亚东南部的土著居民，I788-I850 年》（悉尼，1983 年）；Butlin，《经济学与梦幻时代》：我们最初的侵略：澳大利亚东南部的土著居民，I788-I850 年（悉尼，1983 年）；布特林，《经济学与梦幻时代：假设的历史》（剑桥，1993 年）；德里克-J-马尔维尼和约翰-P-怀特（编），《1877 年的澳大利亚人》（悉尼，1987 年）。
${}^{45}$${}^{45}$^(45){ }^{45} Charles C. Mann provides a convenient summary of recent research in 1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York, 2005).
${}^{45}$${}^{45}$^(45){ }^{45} 查尔斯-C-曼恩在《1491：哥伦布之前美洲的新启示》（纽约，2005 年）一书中对最新研究进行了简明扼要的总结。
${}^{46}$${}^{46}$^(46){ }^{46} David Henige has provided what should be the last word on this subject: Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population Debate (Norman OK, 1998).
${}^{46}$${}^{46}$^(46){ }^{46} 戴维-亨尼吉（David Henige）提供了有关这一主题的最后一篇文章：Numbers from Nowhere：美国印第安人接触人口辩论》（Norman OK，1998 年）。

Regression analysis is only as robust as the numerical evidence it draws on. Statistical methods achieve valid results where the problem under investigation can be closely defined and where reliable quantitative data, such as time series, already exist or can be assembled for all the variables. In these circumstances econometric techniques can give precision to historical judgements that are often covered by vague qualifiers, such as ‘largely’ or ‘partly’. Problems arise where the data are incomplete or ambiguous, and where causal precision is extracted from very broad assumptions. The risk of achieving spurious accuracy increases where numerical weights are assigned to variables that are themselves diffuse, inconstant or imperfectly separated. In such cases, elegance may need to bow to complexity, and conventional historical methods, though inexact, may be the appropriate option.
回归分析的稳健性取决于它所依据的数字证据。统计方法在以下情况下可以取得有效的结果：所研究的问题可以得到严密的界定；可靠的定量数据（如时间序列）已经存在或可以收集到所有变量的数据。在这种情况下，计量经济学技术可以为历史判断提供精确性，而历史判断往往被模糊的限定词所涵盖，如 "大体上 "或 "部分"。如果数据不完整或模棱两可，从非常宽泛的假设中提取因果精确度，就会出现问题。如果给本身分散、不稳定或分离不完全的变量分配数字权重，那么获得虚假精确度的风险就会增加。在这种情况下，优雅可能需要向复杂低头，传统的历史方法虽然不精确，但可能是适当的选择。

The second issue concerns the classification of colonies adopted by Acemoglu and his co-authors and followed by most of the contributors to the debate. The decision to divide colonies into two categories, one associated with white settlement and termed ‘productive’, and the other associated with white rule over indigenous societies and termed ‘extractive’, is an unexplained retreat from the accepted historiography of the subject. It harks back to the distinction drawn by John Stuart Mill (though he is not cited in this connection) between advanced colonies inhabited by white settlers and uncivilized colonies inhabited by barbarians. ${}^{47}$${}^{47}$^(47){ }^{47} Later in the nineteenth century, weighty intellectuals such as Wilhelm Roscher and Paul Leroy-Beaulieu formulated more extensive classifications of the European empires that were expanding in the world around them. ${}^{48}$${}^{48}$^(48){ }^{48} In the 1940 , one of the most eminent historians of empire, Keith Hancock, applied Frederick Jackson Turner’s notion of the moving frontier to produce four categories of colony. ${}^{49}$${}^{49}$^(49){ }^{49} By the i96os, development economists were also devising typologies that took account of significant internal differences among countries previously described generically as ‘backward’ or ‘underdeveloped’. Hla Myint’s influential analysis, for example, distinguished between over-populated and under-populated regions, and between mining and plantation enclaves on the one hand, and ‘peasant’ export sectors on the other. ${}^{50}$${}^{50}$^(50){ }^{50} Each of these categories combined factors of production in different ways, generated different linkages, and hence had different parameters of development.
第二个问题涉及阿斯莫格鲁及其合著者采用的殖民地分类法，辩论中的大多数撰稿人也采用了这一分类法。将殖民地分为两类的决定，一类与白人定居有关，被称为 "生产性"，另一类与白人统治土著社会有关，被称为 "采掘性"。这不禁让人想起约翰-斯图亚特-密尔（John Stuart Mill）对白人定居者居住的先进殖民地和野蛮人居住的未开化殖民地所做的区分（尽管没有引用他的论述）。 ${}^{47}$${}^{47}$^(47){ }^{47} 19世纪后期，威廉-罗舍尔（Wilhelm Roscher）和保罗-勒鲁瓦-博略（Paul Leroy-Beaulieu）等重量级知识分子对在其周围世界扩张的欧洲帝国进行了更广泛的分类。 ${}^{48}$${}^{48}$^(48){ }^{48} 1940年，最著名的帝国史学家之一基思-汉考克（Keith Hancock）运用弗雷德里克-杰克逊-特纳（Frederick Jackson Turner）的移动边疆概念，提出了四种殖民地类别。 ${}^{49}$${}^{49}$^(49){ }^{49} 到了二十世纪九十年代，发展经济学家也开始考虑到以前被笼统地称为 "落后 "或 "欠发达 "的国家之间存在的显著内部差异，设计出一些类型。例如，Hla Myint 的分析很有影响力，他区分了人口过剩地区和人口不足地区，以及矿业和种植园飞地和 "农民 "出口部门。 ${}^{50}$${}^{50}$^(50){ }^{50} 这些类别中的每一类都以不同的方式组合生产要素，产生不同的联系，因此具有不同的发展参数。

By the time the modern study of African history began in the i96os, Mill’s over-simple and less than objective classification had long been replaced by typologies that offered a more accurate representation of the diversity of colonial rule. A common typology used by historians today distinguishes between colonies of settlement, colonies of concessions and colonies of trade, which in the case of Africa can be illustrated by South Africa, the Belgian Congo and Nigeria, respectively. Since Acemoglu’s analysis lacks even this
现代非洲史研究始于 19 世纪 90 年代，米尔过于简单和不够客观的分类方法早已被更准确地反映殖民统治多样性的类型学所取代。如今，历史学家们常用的一种类型学将殖民地分为定居殖民地、租借殖民地和贸易殖民地，在非洲，这三种殖民地可分别以南非、比属刚果和尼日利亚为例加以说明。由于阿齐莫格鲁的分析连这一点都缺乏

modest degree of refinement, he is obliged to crush all of colonial Africa into the extractive mode that supposedly reinforced unproductive institutions.
在适度精炼的同时，他不得不将整个殖民地非洲压榨成采掘模式，而这种模式本应强化非生产性机构。

This procedure seriously distorts the history of colonial Africa. Acemoglu’s typology takes no account of colonies of settlement in Africa, which fall by default into the category of extractive regimes, whereas in other parts of the world his study treats them as agents of productive institutions. Although the difference can be explained by evaluating the relationships between settler communities and indigenous societies, it is sufficiently important to require a revision of the simple binary classification adopted by Acemoglu and accepted by other parties to the debate on the reversal of fortunes. The classification also mangles the history of non-settler Africa. In colonies of trade, such as Nigeria, the greater part of export production remained in the hands of the indigenous people and was organized through indigenous institutions. The history of successful African enterprise in producing export crops in the course of the past century and a half is now well known. It is wholly inconsistent with Acemoglu’s claim that non-settler colonies administered extractive regimes that fostered unproductive institutions. It is equally at variance with William Easterly and Ross Levine’s assertion, discussed in the next section of this article, that ethnic fragmentation is a major cause of retarded development. The presence of diverse ethnic groups did not impede the massive export growth that took place before independence. Fortunes expanded in the era following the abolition of the slave trades, and specialization reinforced by ethnic ties contributed to it.
这种做法严重歪曲了非洲殖民史。阿斯莫格鲁的分类法没有考虑到非洲的定居殖民地，这些殖民地被默认为榨取性政权，而在世界其他地区，他的研究则将这些殖民地视为生产机构的代理人。虽然可以通过评估定居者社区与土著社会之间的关系来解释这种差异，但它的重要性足以要求对阿齐莫格鲁采用的、并为关于命运逆转的辩论的其他各方所接受的简单二元分类法进行修订。这种分类法还混淆了非定居非洲的历史。在尼日利亚等贸易殖民地，出口生产的大部分仍然掌握在当地人手中，并通过当地机构组织起来。在过去的一个半世纪中，非洲企业成功生产出口作物的历史现已众所周知。阿齐莫格鲁声称，非定居殖民地实行的是榨取性制度，这种制度助长了非生产性机构，这与阿齐莫格鲁的说法完全不符。这与威廉-伊斯特里和罗斯-莱文的论断（本文下一节将讨论这一论断）同样不符，即种族分裂是发展迟缓的主要原因。不同种族群体的存在并没有阻碍独立前的大规模出口增长。在废除奴隶贸易后的时代，财富得到了增长，而由种族联系加强的专业化也为此做出了贡献。

The third cause of concern is the excessive abbreviation of history that all these arguments rely on. ${}^{51}$${}^{51}$^(51){ }^{51} This objection is not simply that of a specialist with an eye for detail. The assumption that it is acceptable to start in 1500 and fast-forward to the present without taking full account of intervening changes is to use history but also to negate its purpose. Colonial rule in Africa was not the same, either in scale or in policy, in 1500 as it was in 1900; to suppose that it was is to promote the purposes of measurement above those of historical accuracy. Olsson has performed a service for economists in distinguishing between mercantilist empires and those that were created or enlarged at the close of the nineteenth century. ${}^{52}$${}^{52}$^(52){ }^{52} This distinction, however, is only a beginning. It is now a commonplace among historians that the precolonial era was anything but static, and that its multiple movements involved both institutional change and shifting ethnicities. In the nineteenth century, to cite the well-studied case of West Africa, the process of adaptation from slave-trading to other types of exports brought about a fundamental realignment of the factors of production and induced major institutional changes. ${}^{53}$${}^{53}$^(53){ }^{53} Ordinary households began to participate directly in export-production for the first time; land in areas that were able to
第三个令人担忧的原因是，所有这些论点都依赖于对历史的过度缩写。 ${}^{51}$${}^{51}$^(51){ }^{51} 这种反对意见并不仅仅是一个注重细节的专家提出的。假设从 1500 年开始并快进到现在而不充分考虑其间的变化是可以接受的，这既是在利用历史，也是在否定历史的目的。非洲的殖民统治，无论是规模还是政策，在 1500 年与 1900 年都不尽相同；假定殖民统治与 1900 年相同，则是将衡量的目的置于历史准确性之上。奥尔森为经济学家提供了一项服务，即区分重商主义帝国和那些在19世纪末建立或扩大的帝国。 ${}^{52}$${}^{52}$^(52){ }^{52} 然而，这种区分只是一个开端。现在，历史学家们普遍认为，前殖民时代并非一成不变，它的多重运动既涉及制度变革，也涉及种族变迁。19 世纪，以研究得比较清楚的西非为例，从奴隶贸易到其他类型出口品的转变过程带来了生产要素的根本性调整，并引发了重大的制度变革。 ${}^{53}$${}^{53}$^(53){ }^{53} 普通家庭首次开始直接参与出口生产；有能力生产的地区的土地也在不断增长。

participate in the new economy began to acquire scarcity value; wage labour gradually replaced slave status within Africa. Institutional change continued under colonial rule, but not solely in response to colonial policies, as Acemoglu and his co-authors, and Nunn, assume. In colonies of trade, colonial rule was negotiated as well as imposed, and institutional change was the product of African initiatives as well as of exogenous causes, such as population growth.
参与新经济开始获得稀缺价值；在非洲，雇佣劳动逐渐取代奴隶地位。制度变革在殖民统治下持续进行，但并不像阿斯莫格鲁及其合著者和纳恩所假设的那样，仅仅是对殖民政策的回应。在贸易殖民地，殖民统治既是通过谈判达成的，也是强加于人的，制度变革既是非洲人主动行动的产物，也是人口增长等外因的结果。

William Easterly and Ross Levine’s contribution to the debate deals with a social institution, ethnicity, which they claim has particular relevance to Africa’s development problems. ${}^{54}$${}^{54}$^(54){ }^{54} They argue that cross-country variations in the incidence of ethnic diversity explain a substantial part of the differences in public policies, political institutions and other causes of long-run development. They present data showing that there is a much greater degree of ethnic diversity in Africa than in other developing countries, notably in Asia. Their analysis goes on to suggest that ethnic diversity impedes agreement on the provision of vital public goods because different groups fail to see eye-to-eye on policies that benefit all members of society. Indeed, ethnic diversity creates incentives to adopt policies that harm development. It diverts investment to particular interests, encourages inter-ethnic competition for rents, promotes corruption and opens the way for violence. The outcome is inadequate education, backward financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, government indebtedness, deficient infrastructure, and political instability. The authors conclude that ethnic diversity alone explains between 25 and 40 per cent of the growth differential between Africa and East Asia. ${}^{55}$${}^{55}$^(55){ }^{55}
威廉-伊斯特里和罗斯-莱文对这一辩论的贡献涉及一种社会制度--种族，他们声称这种制度与非洲的发展问题特别相关。 ${}^{54}$${}^{54}$^(54){ }^{54} 他们认为，种族多样性发生率的跨国差异在很大程度上解释了公共政策、政治体制和其他长期发展原因的差异。他们提供的数据显示，非洲的种族多样性程度远远高于其他发展中国家，尤其是亚洲。他们的分析进而表明，种族多样性阻碍了在提供重要公共产品方面达成一致，因为不同群体无法在惠及所有社会成员的政策上达成一致。事实上，种族多样性会刺激人们采取损害发展的政策。它使投资流向特定利益集团，鼓励种族间争夺租金，助长腐败，并为暴力开辟道路。其结果是教育不足、金融体系落后、外汇市场扭曲、政府负债累累、基础设施不足以及政治不稳定。作者的结论是，仅种族多样性一项就能解释非洲与东亚之间 25% 到 40% 的增长差异。 ${}^{55}$${}^{55}$^(55){ }^{55}

Although much of the discussion generated by this thesis has focused on methodology rather than on history, the questions raised are directly relevant to historical enquiry too. ${}^{56}$${}^{56}$^(56){ }^{56} Easterly and Levine assumed that their data on ethnicity (which were derived from a Soviet source dating from the 1960 s) ${}^{57}$${}^{57}$^(57){ }^{57} were unproblematic, at least as far as their particular project was concerned. Subsequent commentators, however, have recognized that ethnicity is a slippery and malleable term that is not easily reduced to units that can be measured accurately. Moreover, even when ethnicity is pinned down, it is still hard to establish convincingly that ethnic fragmentation, though present, is also a prime cause of policies that hamper economic development.
尽管本论文引发的讨论大多集中在方法论而非历史学方面，但提出的问题也与历史研究直接相关。 ${}^{56}$${}^{56}$^(56){ }^{56} 伊斯特里和莱文假定他们关于种族的数据（这些数据来自于 20 世纪 60 年代的一份苏联资料） ${}^{57}$${}^{57}$^(57){ }^{57} 是没有问题的，至少就他们的特定项目而言是如此。然而，后来的评论家们认识到，种族是一个易变的术语，不容易简化为可以精确测量的单位。此外，即使确定了种族问题，也很难令人信服地确定种族分裂虽然存在，但也是阻碍经济发展的政策的主要原因。

The principal research effort has been devoted to improving Easterly and Levine’s measure of ethnic fragmentation. One approach has been to construct new and broader indices of what the literature terms ‘fractionalization’ to capture degrees of cultural diversity that the original index failed to
主要的研究工作是改进 Easterly 和 Levine 的种族分化测量方法。其中一种方法是构建新的、更广泛的 "分化 "指数，即文献中所说的 "分化 "指数，以捕捉原有指数未能捕捉到的文化多样性程度。

represent adequately. ${}^{58}$${}^{58}$^(58){ }^{58} An alternative index, designed by Arcand and his coauthors, confirms the high degree of ethnic fragmentation in Africa but concludes that there is little evidence linking it to policies that reduce growth. ${}^{59}$${}^{59}$^(59){ }^{59} A further index, devised for Africa by Daniel Posner, links ethnicity to economic outcomes by including only groups that were involved in the political process rather than all ethnic groups in a given country. ${}^{60}$${}^{60}$^(60){ }^{60} Posner’s new measure confirms Easterly and Levine’s original conclusion that ethnic fractionalization is causally related to poor growth. Posner’s index, however, has its own difficulties. It is not clear that Posner succeeds either in isolating the ethnic element from other variables, or in showing that the presence of politically influential ethnic groups is causally related to adverse public sector policies. In general, the improved indices show that there is a higher degree of ethnic fragmentation in Africa than elsewhere. In doing so, however, they also make it harder to distinguish ethnic, linguistic and religious variables from other influences, such as the geographical endowment and the political process, with which they interact.
充分体现了这一点。 ${}^{58}$${}^{58}$^(58){ }^{58} 由Arcand和他的合作者设计的另一个指数证实了非洲种族分裂的严重程度，但得出的结论是，几乎没有证据表明种族分裂与降低增长的政策有关。 ${}^{59}$${}^{59}$^(59){ }^{59} 丹尼尔-波斯纳（Daniel Posner）为非洲设计的另一个指数将种族与经济结果联系起来，只包括参与政治进程的群体，而不是特定国家的所有种族群体。 ${}^{60}$${}^{60}$^(60){ }^{60} 波斯纳的新措施证实了伊斯特里和莱文最初的结论，即种族分裂与增长不佳存在因果关系。然而，Posner 的指数也有其自身的困难。不清楚 Posner 是否成功地将种族因素与其他变量分离开来，也不清楚他是否成功地证明了具有政治影响力的种族群体的存在与不利的公共部门政策存在因果关系。总体而言，改进后的指数表明，非洲的种族分裂程度高于其他地区。然而，在这样做的同时，它们也使得将种族、语言和宗教变量与其他影响因素（如地理禀赋和政治进程）区分开来变得更加困难，因为它们是相互作用的。

Easterly and Levine themselves did not explore the historical basis of ethnicity in any detail, though they referred briefly to the role of colonialism in splitting ethnic groups at the time of the partition of Africa. Other social scientists, however, have followed their tentative lead and looked further into the past. One of the most interesting contributions, which so far few economists have considered, is by a political scientist, Pierre Englebert, whose commentary on ethnic fragmentation draws on evidence from precolonial Africa. ${}^{61}$${}^{61}$^(61){ }^{61} Englebert argues that contemporary institutions are more likely to be effective in promoting growth if they are congruent with indigenous institutions. High degrees of congruence underline the legitimacy of governments and enhance their ability to foster institutions that induce development. ${}^{62}$${}^{62}$^(62){ }^{62} Low levels of congruence have the opposite effect and create conditions that favour patrimonial politics, which lead to regionalism, clientelism and corruption. Englebert concludes that ethno-linguistic fragmentation has no significant effect on the quality of public goods provided by African governments. Societies can be ethnically homogeneous but still be dysfunctional, and ethnically heterogeneous but still capable of upholding the rule of law and developing progressive institutions. To the extent that Africa’s dismal economic record is linked to the presence of poor institutions,
伊斯特里和莱文本身并没有详细探讨种族的历史基础，不过他们简要提到了非洲分治时殖民主义在分裂族群方面所起的作用。不过，其他社会科学家已经效仿他们的尝试性做法，进一步研究了过去。其中最有趣的贡献之一是政治学家皮埃尔-恩格尔贝特（Pierre Englebert）所做的，迄今为止，很少有经济学家考虑过这一问题。 ${}^{61}$${}^{61}$^(61){ }^{61} 恩格尔贝特认为，当代体制如果与本土体制相一致，就更有可能有效促进增长。高度的一致性强调了政府的合法性，并增强了政府促进机构发展的能力。 ${}^{62}$${}^{62}$^(62){ }^{62} 一致性低则效果相反，会创造有利于世袭政治的条件，从而导致地区主义、裙带关系和腐败。恩格尔贝特的结论是，民族语言分裂对非洲政府提供的公共产品的质量没有显著影响。社会可以是种族同质的，但仍然会功能失调；也可以是种族异质的，但仍然能够维护法治和发展进步的制度。如果说非洲令人沮丧的经济记录与体制不健全有关，那么，非洲政府提供的公共产品的质量则与体制不健全有关、
${}^{58}$${}^{58}$^(58){ }^{58} Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat and Romain Wacziarg, ‘Fractionalization’, Fournal of Economic Growth, 8 (2003), 155-94; James D. Fearon, ‘Ethnic and cultural diversity by country’, Fournal of Economic Growth, 8 (2003), 195-222.
${}^{58}$${}^{58}$^(58){ }^{58} Alberto Alesina、Arnaud Devleeschauwer、William Easterly、Sergio Kurlat 和 Romain Wacziarg，"Fractionalization"，《经济增长期刊》，8 (2003)，155-94；James D. Fearon，"Ethnic and Cultural diversity by country"，《经济增长期刊》，8 (2003)，195-222。
${}^{59}$${}^{59}$^(59){ }^{59} Jean-Louis Arcand, Patrick Guillaumont and Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney, ‘How to make a tragedy: on the alleged effect of ethnicity on growth’, Fournal of International Development, 12 (2000), 925-38.
${}^{59}$${}^{59}$^(59){ }^{59} Jean-Louis Arcand, Patrick Guillaumont and Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney, "How to make a tragedy: on the alleged effect of ethnicity on growth", Fournal of International Development, 12 (2000), 925-38.
${}^{60}$${}^{60}$^(60){ }^{60} Daniel N. Posner, ‘Measuring ethnic fractionalization in Africa’, American fournal of Political Science, 48 (2004), 849-63.
${}^{60}$${}^{60}$^(60){ }^{60} Daniel N. Posner, "Measuring ethnic fractionalization in Africa", American fournal of Political Science, 48 (2004), 849-63.
${}^{61}$${}^{61}$^(61){ }^{61} Pierre Englebert, ‘Pre-colonial institutions, post-colonial states, and economic development in tropical Africa’, Political Research Quarterly, 53 (2000), 7-36; Englebert, State Legitimacy and Development in Africa (Boulder, 2000).
${}^{61}$${}^{61}$^(61){ }^{61} Pierre Englebert，《热带非洲殖民前机构、殖民后国家和经济发展》，《政治研究季刊》，53 (2000)，7-36；Englebert，《非洲的国家合法性与发展》（博尔德，2000 年）。
${}^{62}$${}^{62}$^(62){ }^{62} Nicola Gennaioli and Ilia Rainer reach broadly the same conclusion but do not refer to Englebert (see n. 67): ‘The modern impact of precolonial centralization in Africa’, Fournal of Economic Growth, 12 (2007), 185-234.
${}^{62}$${}^{62}$^(62){ }^{62} Nicola Gennaioli 和 Ilia Rainer 得出了大致相同的结论，但没有提到 Englebert（见注 67）：非洲殖民前中央集权的现代影响》，《经济增长期刊》，12 (2007)，185-234。

Englebert finds that the main cause is the low incidence of legitimacy among states, which he attributes largely to the actions of colonial powers in imposing arbitrary boundaries on Africa at the time of partition.
恩格尔贝特认为，主要原因是国家之间的合法性较低，他认为这主要是由于殖民国家在非洲分治时任意划定边界造成的。

The most ambitious historical contribution is by two economists, Pelle Ahlerup and Ola Olsson, who have advanced a theory to explain the global determinants of ethnic diversity. ${}^{63}$${}^{63}$^(63){ }^{63} Why is it, they ask, that the probability of any two randomly chosen individuals belonging to different ethnic groups is only 0.2 per cent in South Korea, whereas it is 93 per cent in Uganda? To answer this question, they begin by defining an ethnic group as one whose members have a shared history or ancestry that is typically associated with a homeland or founding migration and is bound together by language, religion and common customs. ${}^{64}$${}^{64}$^(64){ }^{64} They then trace the evolution of diverse ethnicities by making enterprising use of data from the human genome project and relating it to the two main hypotheses adopted by historians: one holding that ethnicity is primordial; the other that it is the constructed product of recent state formation.
两位经济学家佩勒-阿勒鲁普（Pelle Ahlerup）和奥拉-奥尔森（Ola Olsson）做出了最具雄心的历史性贡献。 ${}^{63}$${}^{63}$^(63){ }^{63} 他们问，为什么随机选择的两个人属于不同种族群体的概率在韩国仅为 0.2%，而在乌干达却高达 93%？为了回答这个问题，他们首先将族群定义为其成员拥有共同历史或祖先的群体，这些历史或祖先通常与故乡或创始迁徙有关，并因语言、宗教和共同习俗而联系在一起。 ${}^{64}$${}^{64}$^(64){ }^{64} 然后，他们利用人类基因组研究项目的数据，追溯了不同民族的演变过程，并将其与历史学家采用的两种主要假设联系起来：一种假设认为，民族性是原始的；另一种假设认为，民族性是近代国家形成的产物。

The central argument runs as follows. Since human beings originated in East Africa and migrated from there to other parts of the continent and the world, the process of dispersion, which was built into hunting and gathering societies, was inevitably accompanied by fragmentation. Why was this? The answer, according to Ahlerup and Olsson, is that ethnic groups came into being principally to supply public goods, such as protection and a moral code governing rules of conduct. These goods preserved the cohesion, and hence the identity, of the group. Public goods, however, were not easily provided over long distances in the pre-industrial era. The organization and system of controls that underpinned the solidarity of the group depended on the continuing proximity of its members. As migration took place and the distance from centres of origin grew, the public provision that initially held the group together had to be recreated by forming, over time, new ethnic identities. It follows from this argument that ethnic diversity is related to antiquity, which is why the greatest diversity in the world today is found in Africa.
中心论点如下。由于人类起源于东非，并从那里迁徙到非洲大陆和世界其他地区，狩猎和采集社会的分散过程不可避免地伴随着分裂。这是为什么呢？阿勒鲁普和奥尔森认为，答案是族群的出现主要是为了提供公共产品，如保护和规范行为准则的道德规范。这些物品维护了族群的凝聚力，进而维护了族群的特性。然而，在前工业时代，公共物品不易远距离提供。支撑群体团结的组织和控制体系取决于其成员之间的持续接近。随着迁徙的发生，与原籍中心的距离越来越远，最初维系群体团结的公共供给必须随着时间的推移，通过形成新的种族身份来重新建立。从这一论点可以看出，种族多样性与古代有关，这就是为什么当今世界上最多 样性的地方在非洲。

The rise of sedentary agriculture (the so-called ‘neolithic revolution’) held out the prospect of creating centralized states. Such states preferred homogeneity to diversity because they needed to create commonalities that would underpin the supply of public goods. A concentrated population tended to decrease ethnic diversity by reducing isolation and encouraging state formation. This trend reached its highest point with the rise of nation states in the Western world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Africa, however, the development of states was limited by conditions that made centralization difficult. Moreover - and here Ahlerup and Olsson add an imperial twist to their argument - the new European nation states had no incentive to create homogeneity when they expanded overseas; instead, they pursued a policy of divide and rule because this was the most effective way of
定居农业的兴起（即所谓的 "新石器革命"）为建立中央集权国家带来了希望。相对于多样性而言，这种国家更倾向于同质性，因为它们需要创造共性来支撑公共产品的供应。人口集中往往会通过减少隔离和鼓励国家形成来减少种族多样性。这一趋势在 19 世纪和 20 世纪西方世界民族国家兴起时达到顶峰。然而，在非洲，国家的发展受到各种条件的限制，很难实现中央集权。此外--在此，Ahlerup 和 Olsson 为他们的论点添加了帝国主义的色彩--新的欧洲民族国家在向海外扩张时没有动力去创造同质性；相反，他们奉行分而治之的政策，因为这是最有效的方法。

controlling their colonies. Ahlerup and Olsson do not connect their analysis to the provision of public goods in Africa today, but in drawing attention to the antiquity of ethnic fragmentation they, like Englebert, emphasize the effect of colonial rule in reinforcing it.
控制其殖民地。阿勒鲁普和奥尔松没有将他们的分析与当今非洲的公共产品供应联系起来，但在提请人们注意种族分裂的古老性时，他们与恩格尔贝特一样，强调了殖民统治在强化种族分裂方面的作用。

What might historians contribute to this debate? The possibilities are as wide as the scope of the theories, which are capacious. Two central themes will be picked out here because they refer to research that the new institutional history has yet to incorporate. The first theme, ethnicity, has been the subject of lively historical discussion since it was invigorated by the literature on the invention of tradition more than twenty years ago. The starting point is the idea that ethnicity, like ‘tribalism’, was not a fixed, primordial institution but a construct that colonial rulers were active in establishing because they needed to delineate units of administration in the new states they were building in Africa. ${}^{65}$${}^{65}$^(65){ }^{65} This proposition would appear to support the emphasis placed by scholars such as Englebert, Ahlerup and Olsson on the consolidation and creation of ethnicity in the colonial period. However, the original thesis has undergone several mutations since it was formulated. The idea that traditions were invented is now thought to be top-heavy and mechanical. ${}^{66}$${}^{66}$^(66){ }^{66} Colonial rulers may have tried to solidify ethnicities, but Africans contributed to the process too. Moreover, traditions were not simply conjured into being but drawn from precolonial institutions that continued to evolve under colonial rule. ${}^{67}$${}^{67}$^(67){ }^{67} There are cases where identifiable ethnicities can be traced to the precolonial era and were then consolidated by colonial governments; equally, there are cases where ethnicity was fluid and even ambiguous in the precolonial period and remained so under colonial rule. ${}^{68}$${}^{68}$^(68){ }^{68} The current historiography greatly complicates the story told by the new institutional history. It is now extraordinarily difficult to sustain long-run, continent-wide generalizations about ethnicity. ${}^{69}$${}^{69}$^(69){ }^{69} The historical record suggests that, if development policy is to be guided by assumptions about ethnicity, it needs to proceed cautiously on a case-by-case basis and
历史学家能为这场辩论做出什么贡献？可能性就像理论的范围一样广泛，而理论的范围则是巨大的。这里将挑选出两个核心主题，因为它们涉及新制度史尚未纳入的研究。第一个主题是民族性，自二十多年前有关传统发明的文献为其注入活力以来，它一直是历史学热烈讨论的主题。讨论的出发点是，种族与 "部落主义 "一样，不是一种固定的、原始的制度，而是殖民统治者积极建立的一种建构，因为他们需要在非洲建立的新国家中划定行政单位。 ${}^{65}$${}^{65}$^(65){ }^{65} 这一主张似乎支持了恩格贝特、阿勒鲁普和奥尔森等学者对殖民时期巩固和创造种族的重视。然而，最初的论点自提出以来已经历了多次变化。传统是发明出来的这一观点现在被认为是头重脚轻和机械化的。 ${}^{66}$${}^{66}$^(66){ }^{66} 殖民统治者可能试图巩固种族，但非洲人也在这一过程中做出了贡献。此外，传统并不是简单地创造出来的，而是来自殖民统治前的制度，这些制度在殖民统治下不断发展。 ${}^{67}$${}^{67}$^(67){ }^{67} 有些情况下，可识别的种族可以追溯到前殖民时代，然后由殖民政府加以巩固；同样，有些情况下，种族在前殖民时代是不固定的，甚至是模糊的，在殖民统治下依然如此。 ${}^{68}$${}^{68}$^(68){ }^{68} 当前的历史学使新制度史所讲述的故事变得更加复杂。 现在，要在整个大陆范围内对种族问题进行长期的概括已经异常困难。 ${}^{69}$${}^{69}$^(69){ }^{69} 历史记录表明，如果发展政策要以有关种族的假设为指导，就需要在个案基础上谨慎行事，并且

abandon the attempt to formulate one prescription for a large and diverse continent. ${}^{70}$${}^{70}$^(70){ }^{70}
放弃为幅员辽阔、种类繁多的非洲大陆开出同一种药方的企图。 ${}^{70}$${}^{70}$^(70){ }^{70}

The second theme concerns the relationship between population density, ethnicity and state-building. It is apparent that there were large states in precolonial Africa, but it is equally clear that they were the exception rather than the rule. ${}^{71}$${}^{71}$^(71){ }^{71} No single state ever controlled more than a small part of the continent. In explaining why this was the case, the new institutional history has omitted the contribution made by historians to this subject, though it could also be said that historians themselves might have done more to invigorate these arguments in recent years. The fundamental historical proposition derives from the assumption that the land-labour ratio prevailing in Africa encouraged the extensive use of land, either because the population was small in relation to resources, or because the land was too poor to sustain permanent settlement. ${}^{72}$${}^{72}$^(72){ }^{72} Accordingly, populations tended to migrate or at least to fan out from a central place to the point where, as Ahlerup and Olsson suggest, the chances of establishing central control were weakened or even eliminated. A dispersed population could neither be taxed readily (unlike in India, where land taxes were common) nor provide the basis for a mass market. No doubt this interpretation needs refining and may even need refurbishing. ${}^{73}$${}^{73}$^(73){ }^{73} As it stands, however, it offers the beginning of an explanation of the relative underdevelopment of Africa, and one moreover that identifies limits to growth that existed before the advent of the Europeans.
第二个主题涉及人口密度、种族和国家建设之间的关系。显然，殖民前的非洲曾有过大国，但同样明显的是，它们只是例外，而非普遍现象。 ${}^{71}$${}^{71}$^(71){ }^{71} 没有一个国家能控制非洲大陆的一小部分以上。在解释为什么会出现这种情况时，新制度史忽略了历史学家对这一主题的贡献，不过也可以说，近年来历史学家自己可能为激活这些论点做出了更多贡献。基本的历史命题源于这样一种假设，即非洲普遍存在的土地-劳动力比率鼓励广泛使用土地，这或者是因为相对于资源而言人口较少，或者是因为土地太贫瘠，无法维持永久定居。 ${}^{72}$${}^{72}$^(72){ }^{72} 因此，人口趋向于迁徙，或至少从中心地带向四周扩散，正如阿勒鲁普和奥尔森所言，在这种情况下，建立中央控制的可能性被削弱甚至消失。分散的人口既不容易被征税（与印度不同，印度的土地税很普遍），也无法为大众市场提供基础。毫无疑问，这种解释需要改进，甚至需要翻新。 ${}^{73}$${}^{73}$^(73){ }^{73} 不过，就目前的情况而言，它为非洲的相对欠发达提供了一个解释的开端，而且还指出了在欧洲人出现之前就存在的增长限制。

It is apparent that the new debate on Africa’s ‘growth tragedy’ needs substantial adjustment to take account of the relevant historical evidence. If low levels of population in Africa were caused by infertile soils or disease, geographical and allied determinants need to be incorporated fully into the discussion. If ethnic fragmentation is the product of dispersal, then social institutions-or at least this particular social institution-are partly the product of environmental conditions and not exogenous, independent variables. If this is the case, ethnicity should be seen as a solution rather than as a problem. It functioned in a variety of ways to support the community rather than to act as a weight on it. ${}^{74}$${}^{74}$^(74){ }^{74} The implication of this claim is that the role of
显然，关于非洲 "增长悲剧 "的新辩论需要进行重大调整，以考虑到相关的历史证据。如果非洲的低人口数量是由贫瘠的土壤或疾病造成的，那么就需要在讨论中充分考虑地理因素和相关决定因素。如果种族分裂是分散的产物，那么社会制度--至少是这种特殊的社会制度--部分是环境条件的产物，而不是外生的独立变量。如果是这样的话，民族性就应该被视为一种解决方案，而不是问题。它以各种方式发挥着支持社会的作用，而不是社会的负担。 ${}^{74}$${}^{74}$^(74){ }^{74} 这一主张的含义是，种族的作用是在社会中发挥重要作用。

ethnicity is contingent on historical circumstances. From the point of view of development, what matters, or what ought to matter, is the fit between a social institution and the problems it has to confront. Research into the history of ethnicity will go astray if it tries to find a set of characteristics that are thought to have eternal qualities. A historical defence of ethnicity as a functioning, constructive institution may be irrelevant or anachronistic if the issues of the twenty-first century are no longer those of the previous century. ${}^{75}$${}^{75}$^(75){ }^{75} In evaluating these questions, it should be remembered that ethnicity is one measure of identity and not its totality. Group cohesion has other markers, including economic interests and religious affiliations, which create multiple loyalties. The argument that ethnic fragmentation is responsible for unproductive institutions needs to demonstrate, more convincingly than it has done so far, that other causes of solidarity and motives for action can be discounted. ${}^{76}$${}^{76}$^(76){ }^{76} The study of history is not a substitute for policy-making but it can assist by plotting the evolution of changes in the relationship between social institutions and the issues they are designed to deal with. ${}^{77}$${}^{77}$^(77){ }^{77}
种族取决于历史环境。从发展的角度看，重要的或应该重要的是社会制度与它必须面对的问题之间的契合。如果种族史研究试图寻找一套被认为具有永恒特质的特征，就会误入歧途。如果二十一世纪的问题不再是上一世纪的问题，那么为民族性作为一种有效的、建设性的制度所做的历史辩护就可能无关紧要或不合时宜。 ${}^{75}$${}^{75}$^(75){ }^{75} 在评估这些问题时，我们应该记住，种族只是身份认同的一个衡量标准，而不是其全部。群体凝聚力还有其他标志，包括经济利益和宗教信仰，它们会产生多重忠诚。认为种族分裂是导致机构不具生产力的原因的论点，需要比迄今为止所做的更有说服力地证明，可以不考虑团结的其他原因和行动动机。 ${}^{76}$${}^{76}$^(76){ }^{76} 历史研究不能代替政策制定，但它可以通过描绘社会机构与它们旨在处理的问题之间关系的演变来提供帮助。 ${}^{77}$${}^{77}$^(77){ }^{77}

It would be easy to conclude from this critical survey that the new economic history of Africa contains too many fundamental flaws to merit serious attention from historians. Much of the history emerging from the new thinking is undoubtedly over-schematic, based on incomplete use of the available literature, and compressed to the point where time very nearly stands still. It is apparent, too, as at least one of the participants has observed, that some contributions seem to be driven by the need to demonstrate a mastery of econometric techniques rather than by a concern to incorporate differences in the historical context that are essential if the problem under review is to be explained successfully. ${}^{78}$${}^{78}$^(78){ }^{78} The result is an oddly assorted mixture in which the latest technique, dazzling though it is, rests on an outdated view of how history, and the history of Africa in particular, is studied.
从这份批判性的调查报告中，我们很容易得出这样的结论：新的非洲经济史包含了太多根本性的缺陷，不值得历史学家认真关注。从新思维中产生的许多史料无疑过于详细，基于对现有文献的不完全使用，而且被压缩到时间几乎静止的地步。此外，正如至少一位与会者所指出的，一些研究成果似乎是出于展示对计量经济学技术的掌握的需要，而不是出于对历史背景差异的关注。 ${}^{78}$${}^{78}$^(78){ }^{78} 其结果是，最新的技术虽然令人眼花缭乱，但却建立在对如何研究历史，特别是非洲历史的过时看法之上，从而形成了一种奇怪的混合物。

The imminent danger is that the new history will reproduce a familiar story in a fresh disguise - that of the rise of the West and the fall of the rest. The world portrayed by much of the research reviewed here is one that was made and remade by Europeans. Other societies had little to contribute to
迫在眉睫的危险是，新的历史将以全新的伪装再现一个熟悉的故事--西方的崛起和其他国家的衰落。本文回顾的大部分研究描绘的世界是一个由欧洲人创造和改造的世界。其他社会几乎没有什么贡献

economic development. Indeed, in the case of Africa the indigenous people seem to have been adept at devising growth-retarding institutions, albeit with outside assistance. The early development economists, whose work is now neglected, knew better when they formulated different categories of underdevelopment and drew attention to the varied routes to development open to different societies. Economic historians amplified this understanding by emphasising the dynamic qualities of indigenous societies in Africa and by identifying specific configurations of poverty that reflected regional particularities. Given these advances, it is anachronistic to try to reduce the history of modern economic development to a question of determining the location of Western settlement. A similar, equally unrecognized, bias can accompany the treatment of ethnicity if it is portrayed as an exotic phenomenon that needs rectifying if development is to occur. Ethnicity is as universal as it is malleable. Fluid ethnic identities abounded in Western Europe, when the foundations of modern development were being laid, and were not abandoned even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite the exclusive claims of nationalism. ${}^{79}$${}^{79}$^(79){ }^{79}
经济发展。事实上，在非洲，土著人民似乎善于设计阻碍增长的体制，尽管他们得到了外部援助。早期的发展经济学家（他们的研究成果如今已被忽视）在制定不同的欠发达类别，并提请人们注意不同社会所面临的各种发展道路时，就已经认识到了这一点。经济史学家通过强调非洲本土社会的动态特质和确定反映地区特殊性的具体贫困结构，进一步加深了这一认识。鉴于这些进步，试图将现代经济发展史简化为确定西方定居地点的问题是不合时宜的。在处理种族问题时，如果将其描绘成一种异国现象，而要实现发展就必须纠正这种现象，那么就会出现类似的、同样未被认识到的偏见。种族既具有普遍性，也具有可塑性。在西欧，当现代发展的基础正在奠定时，流动的种族身份就已经存在，甚至在 19 世纪和 20 世纪，尽管民族主义提出了排他性的主张，但种族身份并没有被抛弃。 ${}^{79}$${}^{79}$^(79){ }^{79}

These observations touch upon an old set of arguments concerning the universality of Western economic theory. ${}^{80}$${}^{80}$^(80){ }^{80} Policy-makers have traditionally favoured a ‘best practice’ model, which begins by assuming that recommendations for development can be deduced from first principles. This assumption is theoretically pleasing, globally applicable and allows progress towards common goals to be measured and compared. The risk is that, in practice, development policy will define ‘good’ institutions as those that prevail in the country of origin: protecting property rights, for example, translates as protecting private property. This thought process carries forward the errors of modernization theory, which held, for example, that the most appropriate social unit for development purposes was the nuclear family rather than the extended family. A closely associated mistake is to compare alien societies to a textbook ideal rather than to a functioning reality. If, as is claimed, the United States is the most developed country in the world, it is also one that has marked ethnic divisions, intense regional loyalties, a notable level of political corruption, and considerable difficulty agreeing on the provision of public goods. This reality is rarely to the fore when policies for reforming Africa are being formulated. ${}^{81}$${}^{81}$^(81){ }^{81} Universal principles and ideal types will take different forms in different contexts. Understanding particular contexts means accepting that there are different routes to development and different concepts of what development means. ${}^{82}$${}^{82}$^(82){ }^{82} Theoretical purity can be achieved either by working with perfect data or by
这些观点触及了有关西方经济理论普遍性的一系列老生常谈。 ${}^{80}$${}^{80}$^(80){ }^{80} 政策制定者历来青睐 "最佳实践 "模式，首先假定可以从第一原则中推导出发展建议。这种假设在理论上是可行的，在全球范围内也是适用的，而且可以对实现共同目标的进展情况进行衡量和比较。但风险在于，在实践中，发展政策会将 "好 "的制度定义为原籍国普遍存在的制度：例如，保护产权就意味着保护私有财产。这种思维过程延续了现代化理论的错误，例如，现代化理论认为，最适合发展目的的社会单位是核心家庭，而不是大家庭。与此密切相关的一个错误是，把外来社会比作教科书上的理想社会，而不是正常运作的现实社会。如果说美国是世界上最发达的国家，那么它也是一个民族分裂明显、地区忠诚度高、政治腐败严重、在提供公共产品方面很难达成一致的国家。在制定非洲改革政策时，这一现实情况很少被提及。 ${}^{81}$${}^{81}$^(81){ }^{81} 普遍原则和理想类型在不同的环境中会有不同的表现形式。了解具体情况意味着承认有不同的发展道路和不同的发展概念。 ${}^{82}$${}^{82}$^(82){ }^{82} 理论的纯粹性可以通过使用完美的数据来实现，也可以通过以下方法来实现
${}^{79}$${}^{79}$^(79){ }^{79} Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002); David R. Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White (New York, 2005).
${}^{79}$${}^{79}$^(79){ }^{79} Patrick J. Geary，《国家的神话》：The Medieval Origins of Europe》（普林斯顿，2002 年）；David R. Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness：美国移民如何成为白人》（纽约，2005 年）。
${}^{80}$${}^{80}$^(80){ }^{80} An interesting recent comment on this ancient subject is Esther Duflo, ‘Poor but rational?’, in Abhijit Banerjee, Dilip Mookherjee and Roland Benabou (eds.), Understanding Poverty (New York, 2006), 367-78.
${}^{80}$${}^{80}$^(80){ }^{80} 埃斯特-杜夫洛（Esther Duflo）的《贫穷但理性？》，收录于 Abhijit Banerjee、Dilip Mookherjee 和 Roland Benabou（编辑）的《理解贫穷》（纽约，2006 年），第 367-78 页。
${}^{81}$${}^{81}$^(81){ }^{81} Some unintended and adverse consequences of institutional reform are identified by Robert H. Bates, ‘Institutions and development’, fournal of African Economies, 15 (2006), ro-6I.
${}^{81}$${}^{81}$^(81){ }^{81} 罗伯特-H-贝茨（Robert H. Bates）在《机构与发展》一文中指出了机构改革的一些意外和不利后果，《非洲经济杂志》（fournal of African Economies），15（2006），ro-6I。
${}^{82}$${}^{82}$^(82){ }^{82} As argued by Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford, 1999), who show how policies of structural adjustment,
${}^{82}$${}^{82}$^(82){ }^{82} 正如 Patrick Chabal 和 Jean-Pascal Daloz 在《非洲的作用》（Africa Works：正如帕特里克-沙巴尔和让-帕斯卡尔-达洛兹在《非洲的作用：作为政治工具的混乱》（牛津，1999年）一书中所论述的那样，他们展示了结构调整政策、
trying to make imperfect data fit technical perfection. Both options abstract from the problem they seek to analyse. If the institutional approach is to be pursued, it will need to step closer to realism and adopt ‘second-best practice’ itself. ${}^{83}$${}^{83}$^(83){ }^{83}
试图使不完美的数据符合技术上的完美。这两种方案都从它们试图分析的问题中抽象出来。如果要推行制度化方法，就必须向现实主义靠拢，采用 "次优做法"。 ${}^{83}$${}^{83}$^(83){ }^{83}

Even if all these points are conceded, however, there is still a powerful case for treating the new literature seriously. There is widespread agreement that poverty is a central issue, if not the central issue, in Africa today and has been throughout the continent’s long history. The influences that have attracted historians to other subjects are receding: a material return is now in sight. With Bob Geldof to provide the publicity and leading economists to light the way, circumstances favour the revival of economic history. The parsimonious explanations economists aim at achieving have the advantage of framing bold, clear hypotheses; the techniques they deploy offer a degree of precision that historians sometimes shy away from, even when it is attainable. Historians know as well as economists that it is much easier to be right about small matters than to be illuminating about big ones. The research summarized here deserves great credit for reopening lines of enquiry that are important for understanding both precolonial and colonial history. The degree of approval of, or dissent from, particular interpretations matters less at this preliminary stage of the discussion than the prospect that history will be taken seriously by policy-makers.
不过，即使承认所有这些观点，我们仍然有充分的理由认真对待这些新文献。人们普遍认为，贫困即使不是当今非洲的核心问题，也是非洲漫长历史中的核心问题。吸引历史学家关注其他主题的影响正在消退：物质回归已指日可待。有鲍勃-盖尔多夫（Bob Geldof）的宣传和著名经济学家的指引，经济史的复兴指日可待。经济学家旨在实现的简明解释具有提出大胆、明确假设的优势；他们采用的技术具有历史学家有时会回避的精确度，即使这种精确度是可以达到的。历史学家和经济学家一样清楚，对小事的正确性要比对大事的启发性容易得多。本文总结的研究值得称赞，因为它重新开启了对理解前殖民地历史和殖民地历史都很重要的研究思路。在讨论的这一初步阶段，对特定解释的赞同或反对程度并不重要，重要的是历史能否得到决策者的认真对待。

Modernization theory disowned history. All the elements needed to transform ‘traditional’ societies into ‘modern’ ones could be deduced from the pattern of variables formulated by Talcott Parsons. ${}^{84}$${}^{84}$^(84){ }^{84} Today, economists have turned to history to improve their understanding of global poverty. It is they, not historians, who have made the case for the discipline:
现代化理论不承认历史。将 "传统 "社会转变为 "现代 "社会所需的所有要素都可以从塔尔科特-帕森斯（Talcott Parsons）制定的变量模式中推导出来。 ${}^{84}$${}^{84}$^(84){ }^{84} 如今，经济学家转向历史，以增进他们对全球贫困问题的理解。是他们，而不是历史学家，为这门学科提供了依据：

Even giving any substantial weight to centuries-old history may not be so appealing from a policy-making point of view, but the world is as it is. The world seems to be a place where the long eons of history still matter very much today. ${}^{85}$${}^{85}$^(85){ }^{85}
从政策制定的角度来看，即使对几百年前的历史给予任何实质性的重视也可能不那么吸引人，但世界就是这样。在这个世界上，漫长的历史在今天看来仍然非常重要。 ${}^{85}$${}^{85}$^(85){ }^{85}

The conclusions emerging from the new economic history of Africa, if acted on, have implications for policies affecting a wide range of institutional reforms. On this occasion, historians have a chance to play a part in contributing to policies that are informed by history and in this way to help to eliminate poverty among the bottom billion people in Africa. It matters that the new generation of historians accepts the invitation they have been given.
从非洲新经济史中得出的结论，如果付诸行动，将对影响广泛的体制改革的政策产生影响。在此之际，历史学家有机会发挥作用，为制定以史为鉴的政策做出贡献，从而帮助消除非洲最底层 10 亿人的贫困。重要的是，新一代历史学家要接受所发出的邀请。
imposed to promote ‘good’ institutions, have led to unintended neo-patrimonial adaptations that nevertheless enable African states to function.
为促进 "良好 "体制而强加的 "新家长制 "导致了意想不到的调整，但却使非洲国家得以正常运转。
${}^{83}$${}^{83}$^(83){ }^{83} Rodrik, Second-best Institutions, illustrates the advantages of adapting best practice to local circumstances. For a less benign view of the same process, see Jean François Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Beatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (Oxford, 1999).
${}^{83}$${}^{83}$^(83){ }^{83} 罗德里克（Rodrik）在《次优制度》（Second-best Institutions）一书中说明了根据当地情况调整最佳做法的好处。关于对同一过程不那么友好的看法，见让-弗朗索瓦-巴亚特、斯蒂芬-埃利斯和比阿特丽斯-希布：《非洲国家的犯罪化》（牛津，1999 年）。
${}^{84}$${}^{84}$^(84){ }^{84} First advanced in Talcott Parsons, Towards a General Theory of Action (New York, 1937), and elaborated subsequently.
${}^{84}$${}^{84}$^(84){ }^{84} 塔尔科特-帕森斯（Talcott Parsons）在《迈向行动的一般理论》（纽约，1937 年）中首次提出，并在其后得到详细阐述。
${}^{85}$${}^{85}$^(85){ }^{85} Diego Comin, William Easterly and Erick Gong, Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.? (NBER Working Paper 12657, 2006), 23. Italics in the original.
${}^{85}$${}^{85}$^(85){ }^{85} Diego Comin, William Easterly and Erick Gong, Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?(NBER Working Paper 12657, 2006），23。斜体为原文所加。