Jun 23, 2026 · 59 min · 13 segments
**Development economist William Easterly famously does not mince words about the disappointments of anti-poverty megaprojects and far-fetched foreign aid plans.** **For much of his career, Easterly…
William EasterlyGuest
Michael IgoeHost
So I want to start with a concept that's a through line in your book, and that is what you call the development right of conquest.
Can you explain what that is and why you see it as a recurring tendency among groups of people who are ostensibly trying to aid in the development of other groups of people?
So, you know, I started to read a history of, uh, kind of thinking of intellectual thought about colonialism, and I sort of stumbled ac- across this kind of recurrent theme that many of the colonizers and, and conquerors did justify what they were doing as a way to bring progress or civilization or sometimes even use the word development to the people they were conquering.
And this, this started, uh, this idea started happening very early on and then was repeated really over and over again and applied even to ex- such extreme cases of slavery, uh, the conquest of Native Americans, uh, the colonization of Africa, of course, even, uh, the depredations of Leopold in the Belgian Congo.
So, um, you know, this, this fascinated me 'cause it really raised the paradox of, um, how we really think about development, success, and failure.
You know, if it's literally true that development conquerors do bring, do bring a higher material level of income to the people they're conquering, does that make it okay? Or how do we think about that? Uh, and you know, our conventional way of thinking of development as being about GDP per capita, uh, we usually don't have to examine that, and of course, we are usually dealing with much less extreme cases, uh, of bringing development and not doing anything horrible to the people involved, like slavery or, you know, extermination, horrible things like that.
So how should we think about the extreme cases, and does that kind of change in our framework, does it have relevance for today? I think it does, but we'll, we'll talk more about that.
I think, um, a prevailing reaction and-- among those who work in development today, um, to your book would probably be, um, some resistance to, to being considered in the same company as the examples that you cite.
So I want to start with a concept that's a through line in your book, and that is what you call the development right of conquest.
Can you explain what that is and why you see it as a recurring tendency among groups of people who are ostensibly trying to aid in the development of other groups of people?
So, you know, I started to read a history of, uh, kind of thinking of intellectual thought about colonialism, and I sort of stumbled ac- across this kind of recurrent theme that many of the colonizers and, and conquerors did justify what they were doing as a way to bring progress or civilization or sometimes even use the word development to the people they were conquering.
And this, this started, uh, this idea started happening very early on and then was repeated really over and over again and applied even to ex- such extreme cases of slavery, uh, the conquest of Native Americans, uh, the colonization of Africa, of course, even, uh, the depredations of Leopold in the Belgian Congo.
So, um, you know, this, this fascinated me 'cause it really raised the paradox of, um, how we really think about development, success, and failure.
You know, if it's literally true that development conquerors do bring, do bring a higher material level of income to the people they're conquering, does that make it okay? Or how do we think about that? Uh, and you know, our conventional way of thinking of development as being about GDP per capita, uh, we usually don't have to examine that, and of course, we are usually dealing with much less extreme cases, uh, of bringing development and not doing anything horrible to the people involved, like slavery or, you know, extermination, horrible things like that.
So how should we think about the extreme cases, and does that kind of change in our framework, does it have relevance for today? I think it does, but we'll, we'll talk more about that.
I think, um, a prevailing reaction and-- among those who work in development today, um, to your book would probably be, um, some resistance to, to being considered in the same company as the examples that you cite.
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