Contributor
Diamond, Jared M.
Imprint:Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.
Description278 p. : ill., maps ; 22 cm.
Note:Prologue / Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson -- Controlled comparison and Polynesian cultural evolution / Patrick V. Kirch -- Exploding Wests: boom and bust in nineteenth-century settler societies / James Belich -- Politics, banking, and economic development: evidence from New World economies / Stephen Haber -- Intra-island and inter-island comparisons / Jared Diamond -- Shackled to the past: the causes and consequences of Africa's slave trades / Nathan Nunn -- Colonial land tenure, electoral competition, and public goods in India / Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer -- From ancien regime to capitalism: the spread of the French Revolution as a natural experiment / Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson -- Afterword: Using comparative methods in studies of human history / Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references.
Note:This book consists of eight comparative studies drawn from history, archeology, economics, economic history, geography, and political science. The studies cover a spectrum of approaches, ranging from a non-quantitative narrative style in the early chapters to quantitative statistical analyses in the later chapters. The studies range from a simple two-way comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, to comparisons of 81 Pacific islands and 233 areas of India. The societies discussed are contemporary ones, literate societies of recent centuries, and non-literate past societies. Geographically, they include the United States, Mexico, Brazil, western Europe, tropical Africa, India, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand, and other Pacific islands.
