Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (AJR) have received widespread acclaim for their theory of colonization, and in 2024 they won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for it. Their seminal work, The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development, which I read for my Global Politics course at the American University’s School of International Service, argues that a colony’s future turned on one thing: how many settlers survived its diseases. For example, if settler mortality was high in Africa because of disease and a low rate of survival, the institutions set up by colonial powers were extractive, and they did not want to prolong their stay. They would stay only as long as resource exploitation continued.
On the other hand, if settlers found a colony where disease was not a life threat, they carved out inclusive institutions. These institutions helped develop the colonized land; in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, they continued to serve the local population after independence. However, I don’t find their theory convincing. Colonization was driven by the hunger for power and resources, and settler mortality was a symptom of that hunger, not its cause.
At the start of the colonization project, taking Christopher Columbus as the architect of the entire colonization landscape and taking America to be the first colony, the Columbian Exchange killed a huge number of people; by recent estimates, some 56 million indigenous inhabitants, close to 90% of the pre-Columbian population, even as disease and hardship claimed many of the early colonizers too. However, at the time, European colonizers lacked the resources they needed for extraction. They set up institutions that gradually led to the development of “European infrastructures” in America. It wasn't about settler mortality. It was about power: early on, they lacked the power to create havoc across the land, so they built institutions instead.
Moreover, the most intense phase of European colonization came in the 19th century, when many European empires raced to expand their imperial power. In the early days, like Columbus's “discovery” of America and Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India, these were small ventures that crowns backed only on a very limited scale. Empires at the time lacked the reach and resources to go overseas in force, as Columbus's long struggle to fund his venture shows. However, in the 19th century, European powers themselves actively sought to maximize their power and did not care about developing institutions in their colonies. Colonization in Africa came in the 19th century, which sheds light on European genocides and mass murder of the local population. Before that, North and South America, India, and China did not experience that kind of treatment. These tragic murders in Africa are an outcome of empires, and they needed to grab as many “scarce” resources as they could. King Leopold’s massacre in the Congo falls under the empire’s hunger for resources, when people were brutally killed, and this is still a blot on European consciousness.
The Industrial and Scientific Revolution also runs counter to settler mortality theory. In the 19th century, Europe was on the beam of its scientific power and industrial prowess. To stay on top, they needed vast resources. So, they didn't care about institutional development; instead, they wanted to fill their chimneys and smelt iron ore. Institutional development took a back seat, and hunger took center stage. In the 19th century, Africa also became the epicenter of scientific tests. Europeans used Africa as a laboratory, testing local populations for every disease and making them lab rats for every project. Subcontinent India also faced the brunt of the Industrial Revolution.
The English East India Company had been present on Indian soil since the early 17th century. However, it did not consolidate its power, and the Crown did not directly govern India; instead, the Company did so through its proxies. After the 1857 war of independence, the Crown brought India under direct rule in 1858, setting it on a different path. Development in the subcontinent served to extract resources, and, as Shashi Tharoor points out in his book The Inglorious Empire, it continues to do so to this day. All South Asian ports face the sea so cargo can be filled to the top and shipped to the Empire’s capital. Moreover, the British brutality was at its peak; in the 19th century, the reprisals that followed the 1857 rebellion and the famines of the late 1870s killed millions. In the 20th century, Jallianwala Bagh and the Bengal famine stand out.
Lastly, correlation isn’t causation. The timeline AJR picked supports their thesis, but the wider context of colonization tells a different story. The same geography and disease that once killed settlers still shape these economies today, regardless of institutions. It tells us that it was never about settler mortality. In the initial days of the colonization project, the private individuals were not powerful enough to carry out mass murders, so they suffered the Columbian Exchange. Moreover, when empires got involved and colonizers tasted blood, colonization became a playground for the scientific and industrial revolutions. Colonizers never developed institutions based on settler mortality. They were there to extract resources, and they did so at an unprecedented pace. If we mistake that hunger for a story about institutions, we misread how the colonized world was really made.