Institutional Patterns of the Settler Societies: Hybrid, Parallel, and Convergent

Abstract

The Neo-European settler societies constitute one of the three broad paths of economic and social development during the great transformative era of world history that began in the 18th Century and was preceded by the rise to world dominance of Western European imperialism from the late 15th Century. As we have shown at length in this volume, the special combination of natural resource abundance and primary exports, capital abundance, and labor scarcity, were the key elements underlying the settler economic and institutional trajectory of resource intensive development that resulted in many places in the transition to modern industrial economies and societies. This path contrasts with those of, firstly, the capital intensification route of handicraft industries that led to industrialization and then rising wages and later to modernization and, secondly, the labor intensification route of handicrafts that also led to industrialization but with relative wage suppression and delayed modernization. Each of the three ideal typical routes were framed by peculiar institutional as well as environmental and economic contexts that were powerful determinants of the paths followed.