Nathan Nunn: belief

Transcript context

…How do you think about Cape Verde in your framework? Originally, those islands were not settled. They were a center for the slave trade. It wasn’t the case that slaves, per se, were taken from them. Today Cape Verde has a vibrant multiparty democracy, free speech. Hardly a wealthy place, but institutionally, it seems to be doing pretty well in terms of social and political capital. What’s your hypothesis about Cape Verde? This is one thing in the analysis I did that was hard to think about. There were places that were initially uninhabited or that didn’t supply slave exports. Mauritius, Réunion would be another. I think Cape Verde fits into this bucket. They imported slaves and didn’t export them, so they didn’t experience the detrimental effects to indigenous institutions, the breakdown of traditional social structures. They had established property rights. They had a lot greater inequality. I think of them as more similar to plantation islands in the Americas, for example. One interesting fact is, there’s another set of islands, Comoros, where they were initially inhabited, and that looks more like the rest of East Africa. Madagascar would be another example. That’s how I think of it: they escaped all of the detrimental effects of the slave trade. So are you a Zanzibar optimist? [laughter]…

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