Natural Experiments of History

287 Pages·2010·2.23 MB·English

by  Jared Diamond

Natural Experiments of History

Natural Experiments
of History
EDITED BY
Jared Diamond
James A. Robinson
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, Eng land
Copyright © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Natural experiments of history / edited by Jared Diamond
and James A. Robinson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-674-03557-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-674-06019-7 (pbk.)
1. History—Comparative method— Case studies.
2. History—Methodology—Case studies.
I. Diamond, Jared M. II. Robinson, James A., 1960–
D16.N335 2010
907.2—dc22 2009012678
Contents
Prologue 1
JARED DIAMOND AND JAMES A. ROBINSON
1 Controlled Comparison and
Polynesian Cultural Evolution 15
PATRICK V. KIRCH
2 Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in
Nineteenth- Century Settler Societies 53
JAMES BELICH
3 Politics, Banking, and Economic Development:
Evidence from New World Economies 88
STEPHEN HABER
4 Intra-I sland and Inter- Island Comparisons 120
JARED DIAMOND
5 Shackled to the Past: The Causes and
Consequences of Africa’s Slave Trades 142
NATHAN NUNN
6 Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition,
and Public Goods in India 185
ABHIJIT BANERJEE AND LAKSHMI IYER
7 From Ancien Régime to Capitalism: The Spread
of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment 221
DARON ACEMOGLU, DAVIDE CANTONI,
SIMON JOHNSON, AND JAMES A. ROBINSON
Afterword: Using Comparative Methods
in Studies of Human History 257
JARED DIAMOND AND JAMES A. ROBINSON
Contributors 277

Natural Experiments of History

Prologue
JARED DIAMOND AND
JAMES A. ROBINSON
Th e controlled and replicated laboratory experiment,
in which the experimenter directly manipulates variables, is oft en
considered the hallmark of the scientifi c method. It is virtually the
only method employed in laboratory physical sciences and in mo-
lecular biology. Without question, this approach is uniquely power-
ful in establishing chains of cause and eff ect. Th at fact misleads labo-
ratory scientists into looking down on fi elds of science that cannot
employ manipulative experiments.
But the cruel reality is that manipulative experiments are im-
possible in many fi elds widely admitted to be sciences. Th at impos-
sibility holds for any science concerned with the past, such as evolu-
tionary biology, paleontology, epidemiology, historical geology, and
astronomy; one cannot manipulate the past.1 In addition, when one is
studying bird communities, dinosaurs, smallpox epidemics, glaciers,
or other planets, manipulative experiments that are possible in the
present would oft en be condemned as immoral and illegal; one should
not kill birds or melt glaciers. One therefore has to devise other meth-
ods of “doing science”: that is, of observing, describing, and explain-
ing the real world, and of setting the individual explanations within a
larger framework.
A technique that frequently proves fruitful in these historical
disciplines is the so-c alled natural experiment or the comparative