William Easterly traces three centuries of Western expansion, examining the moral and political justifications used to dominate other peoples.



While framed as a book about economic development theory and the history of colonialism, William Easterly’s latest tome is actually something grander and more ambitious: a deeply researched 300-year chronicle of political and moral theory in the Western world. The questions that colonizers, settlers, natives, and revolutionaries wrestle with in Easterly’s 448-page history aren’t just about plantations and trading posts – they’re the most important questions we have about morality and justice. They’re particularly timely in an era when classical liberal values are under greater challenge than at any time since the Cold War.

We begin in the eighteenth century with a grounding in the work of Adam Smith, a justly legendary intellectual figure getting even more attention than usual this year because his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, is celebrating its 250th anniversary alongside the United States. Smith is, for Easterly, a kind of godfather of the liberal tradition of individual rights that the rest of the figures in the book are measured against. Smith stood for trade as a civilized and civilizing force and emphasized the need for voluntary, mutually beneficial relationships. He was not in favor of the takeover of the rest of the world (or just “the Rest” in Easterly’s styling) by white men in the supposedly enlightened West.

The first section contrasts Smith with the French aristocrat Nicolas de Condorcet, who — despite his modern reputation as a champion of free trade and individual rights — endorsed what Easterly calls the Development Right of Conquest. Under this view, a civilized nation or race may rule another’s land if it claims it can put it to a higher and more productive use.

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