Intensive summaries of all the necessary chapters of Why Nations Fail. These notes provide context, definitions, important dates and key people. They also highlight the readings that will boost your studies, allowing you to pass with ease.
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Politics 242 - Why Nations Fail
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These notes are intensive summaries of Why Nations Fail, based on the focal points of the lectures and
slides. I have added all the necessary information for context. It is important to know and understand
everything in these notes.
Lecture one
Chapter two
Culture Theory:
This theory relates to the prosperity of culture. It explains world poverty through means of religious
beliefs, values and ethics being inferior to those that constitute the culture of more
successful/developed countries.
Ignorance Hypothesis:
This theory believes that world inequality exists as a result of the incompetence of our rulers. Our
leaders do not know how to make poor countries rich. This theory revolves largely around the economy
– the work of English economist Lionel Robbins in 1935. Market failures serve as the basis of this theory.
This is when a market economy is not present. It states the poor countries are poor because they
experience a lot of market failures and because economists and policymakers have provided the wrong
advice. Rich countries are rich because their policymakers have figured out better policies to avoid
market failure.
Geography Hypothesis:
This theory considers world inequalities a result of geographical differences. This includes climate and
the geographical lay of the land. This impacts movement and development and warmer climates results
in more diseases such as malaria. An influential person for this theory is Jared Diamond.
The authors include this explanation of the three most widely believed theories to highlight the
inaccuracies of the theories and introduce how their own theory is a more comprehensive and accurate
hypothesis. Their theory provides answers to some of the questions left by the other three theories.
According to the authors, these theories do not account for the porminent patterns of inequality around
the world.
Lecture two
Chapter one
Pages 11-36
• The Spanish strategy of colonisation was highly effective
o The Spanish would arrive and capture the indigenous leader. This allowed the Spanish to
claim the wealth of the leader coerce the indigenous people to provide them with food
and tribute. Then they would establish themselves as the new elite and take control of
taxation, tribute and forced labour.
, • On 8 November 1519, the Spanish (under Cortés) arrived at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and
were welcomed peacefully by the Aztec Emperor – Moctezuma. The Spaniards seized him
immediately and Moctezuma ordered that the Spaniards receive all that they required. The
Spaniards forced the Aztec leaders to take them to the storehouse – Teocalco – where they
removed all of the old before burning the other precious items. Next the Spaniards where taken
to Moctezuma’s own storehouse – Totocalco – and took every precious item.
• The military conquest was completed by 1521.
• Cortés, the governor of this province of New Spain, began dividing up the most precious
resource – the indigenous people themselves – through the institution of an encomienda.
The encomienda had first appeared in 15th century Spain, however in the New World it took a far more
pernicious form. It was the grant of an indigenous person to a Spaniard (an encomendero). The
indigenous people had to give the encomendero tribute and labour services and in exchange the
encomendero converted them to Christianity. (We LOVE a fair trade).
• The Spaniards slowly tortured the Aztec leader to death, as he ‘would’ not produce more gold
for them.
• These strategies were then applied to the rest of the Spanish conquests.
• In 1531, Pizarro journeyed with a number of men to Peru. On November 15, 1532 he reached
the mountain town of Cajamarca. The Spanish ambushed the Inca emperor Atahualpa and in
exchange from his freedom, he was to fill one room with gold and another two with silver.
Atahualpa obliged but the Spanish went back on their word and strangled him in July 1633.
• That November, the Spanish captured the Inca capital of Cusco and the Ican aristocracy received
the same treatment. They were burned alive when they did not satisfy Spanish demands. Great
artistic treasures such as the Temple of the Sun were stripped of their gold so that it could be
melted down into ingots.
• Then the Spanish focused on the Inca people. The encomienda was used again. It was the main
institution for the control and organisation of labour in the early colonial period. It soon faced
another contender.
• When the Spanish discovered large caches of silver, they needed miners.
• The chief Spanish colonial officer, Francisco de Toledo arrived in Peru in 1569 with the primary
objective of solving the labour issues. He began by moving almost the entire indigenous
population and concentrating them into new towns termed ‘reducciones’ (‘reductions’).
• Next, he revived and adapted the Inca labour institution known as the ‘mita’ (‘turn’). Under their
mita system, the Inca’s had used forced labour to run plantations designed to provide food for
temples, the aristocracy and the army. In return, the Inca elite provided famine relief and
security. De Toledo turned the mita system into the largest and most onerous scheme of labour
exploitation in the Spanish colonial period.
• It covered roughly two thousand square miles, with one-seventh of the male inhabitants being
required to work in the mins at Potosí. This mita endured throughout the entire colonial period
and was only abolished in 1825. The effects of such are still felt in the area today. Acomayo is
much poorer than Calca.
• Another institution, the repartimiento de mercancias became widespread during de Telodo’s
tenure.
, • Repartimiento literally means the distribution of goods. This involved the forced sale of goods to
locals at Spanish-determined prices.
• Lastly, de Toledo introduced the trajin which means ‘the burden’. This involved the use of
indigenous people to carry heavy loads of goods as a substitute for pack animals.
Meanwhile, in England...
• At the beginning of Spain’s colonial conquests in the 1490s, England were recovering from a
devastating civil war, the War of Roses. They were therefore, in no place to begin colonising
themselves.
• The English landed in Jamestown – sent by the Virginia Company – with a model of colonisation
that was heavily influenced by the Spanish. Their plan was to capture the local chief and use him
as a way to get provisions and to coerce the population into producing food and wealth for
them.
• Initially they did not know that they were in the territory claimed by the Powhatan Confederacy,
a coalition of some thirty polities owing allegiance to a king called Wahunsunacock. His capital
was the town of Werowocomoco – only twenty miles from Jamestown. Wahunsunacock viewed
the English with great suspicion. He did not have the same centralised political control over the
people as the Incas did over theirs.
• The winter of 1607 arrived, and the English settlers were running ow on food. They were not
prepared to work for themselves upon arrival and therefore were unable to replenish stocks.
• The leader of the colony’s ruling council was Edward Marie WIngfield, however he was
indecisive over which course of action to take. Captain John Smith saved the day.
• More colonist and supplies would be coming back from England, but not in time. Smith initiated
a series of trading missions with local people. Smith was captured by Opechancanough – one of
Wahunsunacock’s younger brothers – and brought before the king.
• Smith was among the first to realise that the Spanish model of colonisation would not work in
North America. The indigenous people could not be coerced into working for them nor could
they be traded with. The English settlers had to work for themselves.
• Smith noted that people of Virginia did not have gold, unlike the Aztecs and Incas.
• The English made a failed attempt at coronating Wahunsunacock in the hopes that he become
subservient to King James I. This resulted in a trade embargo. Wahunsunacock would starve
them out.
• Smith saved the day yet again, writing to England for a ship of carpenters, fishermen, gardeners
etc. He implemented a rule ‘he that will not work shall not eat’.
• The Virginia Company heeded some of Smith’s advice, replacing the ruling council with a single
governor – Sir Thomas Gates. This new mode of governance left no room for Smith, who
returned for England in the autumn of 1609. The winter of 1609/1610 was the so-called
‘starving time’. The colonists of Jamestown perished – some resorting to cannibalism. Of the 500
who entered the winter, only 60 were alive by March.
• Gates introduced a draconian type rule – the Virginia Company attempted to expolit the
colonists as they could not exploit the indigenous people. It was close to martial law – with
execution as the first resort of punishment.
• With such a heavy work regime – running away became more and more appealing for the
colonists, even though it was punishable by death. Given that the population density of
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