And concerning Warren's inequality argument: No state dominated by big landowners has ever sponsored industrial development, because that would make the big landowners a minor power. Big landowners are essentially rentiers.
I believe Jeffrey Williamson argues very well, in Trade and poverty, MIT Press, 2013, that with European industrialization on the way, Asian, Latin American etc capitalists had no more profitable options than staking it all on food and raw materials. Which have no economies of scale to speak of and very little developmental potential.
I suppose the colonial adventure was the method for the already-industrialized to prevent the non-industrialized from going the Japanese way (or the North American way) and industrialize. No country has ever succeeded with that without a heavy State sponsorship. So clip away the state, or make it powerless, no industrial development.
And concerning Warren's inequality argument: No state dominated by big landowners has ever sponsored industrial development, because that would make the big landowners a minor power. Big landowners are essentially rentiers.
I believe Jeffrey Williamson argues very well, in Trade and poverty, MIT Press, 2013, that with European industrialization on the way, Asian, Latin American etc capitalists had no more profitable options than staking it all on food and raw materials. Which have no economies of scale to speak of and very little developmental potential.
I suppose the colonial adventure was the method for the already-industrialized to prevent the non-industrialized from going the Japanese way (or the North American way) and industrialize. No country has ever succeeded with that without a heavy State sponsorship. So clip away the state, or make it powerless, no industrial development.