to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth’. Friedrich List (1841), The National System of Political Economy, translated from the original German edition published in 1841 by Sampson Lloyd in 1885 (Longmans, Green, and Company, London), pp. 295–6. ‘Kicking away the ladder’ is also the title of my academic book on the subject, H-J. Chang (2002), Kicking Away the Ladder – Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (Anthem Press, London).
Samsung in Korean means Three Stars, as does my fictitious Mozambican firm, Tres Estrelas. The last sentence in my imaginary 2061 Economist piece is based on a real Economist article about Samsung, ‘As good as it gets?’ (January 13 2005), whose final sentence reads: ‘Might a relatively unknown electronics manufacturer somewhere in China decide that, if Samsung was able to move from the darkest shadows to the top of the tree, then perhaps it could too?’ The 17 years during which the fuel cell division of my fictitious Mozambican firm lost money is the same investment period during which the electronics division of Nokia, founded in 1960, lost money.
The original story is that of the ‘Good Samaritan’ from the Bible. In that parable, a man who was robbed by highwaymen was helped by a ‘Good Samaritan’, despite the fact that the Samaritans were stereotyped as being callous and not above taking advantage of the others in trouble.
T. Friedman (2000), The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Anchor Books, New York), p. 31.
In 1961, Japan’s per capita income was $402, on a par with those of Chile ($377), Argentina ($378) and South Africa ($396). The data are from C. Kindleberger (1965), Economic Development (McGraw-Hill, New York).
This happened when the Japanese prime minister, Hayao Ikeda, visited France in 1964. ‘The Undiplomat’, Time, 4 April 1969.
J. Sachs & A. Warner (1995), ‘Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1995, no. 1, and M. Wolf (2004), Why Globalisation Works (Yale University Press, New Haven and London) are some of the more balanced and better informed, but ultimately flawed, versions of this. J. Bhagwati (1985), Protectionism (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and J. Bhagwati (1998), A Stream of Windows – Unsettling Reflections on Trade, Immigration, and Democracy (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts) offer a less balanced but probably more representative version.
R. Ruggiero (1998), ‘Whither the Trade System Next?’ in J. Bhagwati & M. Hirsch (eds.), The Uruguay Round and Beyond – Essays in Honour of Arthur Dunkel (The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor), p. 131.
Britain first used unequal treaties in Latin America, starting with Brazil in 1810, as the countries in the continent acquired political independence. Starting with the Nanking Treaty, China was forced to sign a series of unequal treaties over the next couple of decades. These eventually resulted in a complete loss of tariff autonomy, and, very symbolically, a Briton being the head of customs for 55 years – from 1863 to 1908. From 1824 onwards, Thailand (then Siam) signed various unequal treaties, which ended with the most comprehensive one in 1855. Persia signed unequal treaties in 1836 and 1857, and the Ottoman Empire in 1838 and 1861. Japan lost its tariff autonomy following a series of unequal treaties it signed after its opening in 1853, but that did not stop it from forcing an unequal treaty on Korea in 1876. The larger Latin American countries were able to regain tariff autonomy from the 1880s, before Japan did in 1911.Many others regained it only after the First World War, but Turkey had to wait for tariff autonomy until 1923 and China until 1929. See H-J. Chang (2002), Kicking Away the Ladder – Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (Anthem Press, London), pp. 53–4.
For example, in his controversial study, In Praise of Empires, the Indian-born British-American economist Deepak Lal never mentions the role of colonialism and unequal treaties in spreading free trade. See D. Lal (2004), In Praise of Empires – Globalisation and Order (Palgrave Macmillan, New York and Basingstoke).
See N. Ferguson (2003), Empire – How Britain Made the Modern World (Allen Lane, London).
After they gained independence, growth accelerated markedly in developing Asian countries. In all 13 Asian countries (Bangladesh, Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand) for which data were available, annual per capita income growth rates increased after de-colonization. The growth rate jump between the colonial period (1913–1950) and
