Prisoners Of Empire: How Former Colonies Were Set Up To Fail

A compelling social and political balance-sheet of empire; revealing how former colonies worldwide are still shackled by the legacies of colonial oppression. Why do some former colonies fail; staggering from crisis to crisis; while others recover? Why did so many succumb to dictatorship; corruption; civil war and instability after independence? Amal Chatterjee argues that these 'failures' are underpinned by persistent; robust colonial structures which preserve and reproduce the oppressive; exploitative systems of the past. From land ownership to mining; transport networks to education provision; morality to law; many post-colonial institutions function almost exactly as they did under foreign rule; with power still concentrated in the hands of elites; and inequalities baked in. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary and historical material; including memoirs; economic data and administrative documents; Chatterjee explains how empire not only made its colonies into places of extraction and exploitation; but keeps them there today. Offering a truly global account--from the British Empire to the Belgian; from Mexico to Mozambique; from the Sahel to Sri Lanka--he shows how extractive capitalism and colonialism are intertwined; and how human rights and development are hostage to the imperatives of profit-making. The world built by empire can still be challenged and changed--but to design a new; equitable future for all; we must first understand the legacies of the past.