Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

some did develop, few were willing to invest when the emperor could suddenly change his mind and ban trade, making investments in ships, equipment, and trading relations worthless or even worse.
    The reasoning of the Ming and Qing states for opposing international trade is by now familiar: the fear of creative destruction. The leaders’ primary aim was political stability. International trade waspotentially destabilizing as merchants were enriched and emboldened, as they were in England during the era of Atlantic expansion. This was not just what the rulers believed during the Ming and Qing dynasties, but also the attitude of the rulers of the Song dynasty, even if they were willing to sponsor technological innovations and permit greater commercial freedom, provided that this was under their control. Things got worse under the Ming and Qing dynasties as the control of the state on economic activity tightened and overseas trade was banned. There were certainly markets and trade in Ming and Qing China, and the government taxed the domestic economy quite lightly. However, it did little to support innovation, and it exchanged the development of mercantile or industrial prosperity for political stability. The consequence of all this absolutist control of the economy was predictable: the Chinese economy was stagnant throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries while other economies were industrializing. By the time Mao set up his communist regime in 1949, China had become one of the poorest countries in the world.
T HE A BSOLUTISM OF P RESTER J OHN
    Absolutism as a set of political institutions and the economic consequences that flowed from it were not restricted to Europe and Asia. It was present in Africa, for example, with the Kingdom of Kongo, as we saw in chapter 2 . An even more durable example of African absolutism is Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, whose roots we came across in chapter 6 , when we discussed the emergence of feudalism after the decline of Aksum. Abyssinian absolutism was even more long-lived than its European counterparts, because it was faced with very different challenges and critical junctures.
    After the conversion of the Aksumite king Ezana to Christianity, the Ethiopians remained Christian, and by the fourteenth century they had become the focus of the myth of King Prester John. Prester John was a Christian king who had been cut off from Europe by the rise of Islam in the Middle East. Initially his kingdom was thought to be located in India. However, as European knowledge of India increased,people realized that this was not true. The king of Ethiopia, since he was a Christian, then became a natural target for the myth. Ethiopian kings in fact tried hard to forge alliances with European monarchs against Arab invasions, sending diplomatic missions to Europe from at least 1300 onward, even persuading the Portuguese king to send soldiers.
    These soldiers, along with diplomats, Jesuits, and travelers wishing to meet Prester John, left many accounts of Ethiopia. Some of the most interesting from an economic point of view are by Francisco Álvares, a chaplain accompanying a Portuguese diplomatic mission, who was in Ethiopia from 1520 to 1527. In addition, there are accounts by Jesuit Manoel de Almeida, who lived in Ethiopia from 1624, and by John Bruce, a traveler who was in the country between 1768 and 1773. The writings of these people give a rich account of political and economic institutions at the time in Ethiopia and leave no doubt that Ethiopia was a perfect specimen of absolutism. There were no pluralistic institutions of any kind, nor any checks and constraints on the power of the emperor, who claimed the right to rule on the basis of supposed descent from the legendary King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
    The consequence of absolutism was great insecurity of property rights driven by the political strategy of the emperor. Bruce, for example, noted that
    all the land is the king’s; he gives it to whom he pleases during pleasure, and resumes it when it is his will. As soon as he dies the whole land in the kingdom is at the disposal of the Crown; and not only so, but, by death of the present owner, his possessions however long enjoyed, revert to the king, and do not fall to the eldest son.
    Álvares claimed there would be much more “fruit and tillage if the great men did not ill-treat the people.” Alameida’s account of how the society worked is very consistent. He observed:
    It is