How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... FREE TRADE AND THE EMPIRE CHAPTER I FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY I During the first fifty years of the nineteenth century England enjoyed a monopoly in nearly all branches of manufacture, in addition to her commercial supremacy. The monopoly extended to the various textile industries of cotton, woollen, linen, lace, silk; the iron and steel industries; the hardware industry. She had her supremacy from the great series of new inventions which made the Industrial Revolution, which inventions enabled her to produce on a great scale and far more cheaply than before, and much more cheaply than the foreigners working with their ruder methods and apparatus. England enjoyed this B monopoly unchallenged during the Great War, and for some quarter of a century afterwards. During the war the old industries on the Continent were gradually broken up, though the old rude methods long survived. England supplied the Continent with manufactures so far as Napoleon's Berlin Decrees and exclusive policy allowed it. After the war the Continental nations still more bought English manufactures--linen, woollen, cotton, hardware--and gave in return corn, wines, timber, wool, raw flax, hemp, etc. Duties were levied on imported goods on both sides, but they were not protective duties, except the English duties on corn; for the Continental nations had scarcely any manufactures to protect or that competed with ours. England, having the monopoly of many industries, naturally enjoyed high prices and a very great rate of profits. The high prices were not the concomitants, as monopoly prices sometimes are, of a narrow market. There was a vast demand, almost a world-wide demand, for commodities, some of them being of the nature of necessaries: a...

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