Did slavery sow distrust in Africa?

A critique of the "deep roots" literature.

Written by Lipton Matthews.

The “deep roots” literature in economics seeks to explain the enduring nature of global inequality by tracing the economic destinies of nations to events that happened decades or centuries ago. From the coercive labor systems of colonial Latin America to the trust-eroding effects of Africa’s slave trade, the literature posits that historical events cast long shadows that shape present-day outcomes. However, this thesis falls apart under emprical scrutiny.

The central tenets of the deep roots literature—including its econometric foundations and its assumptions about institutional persistence—have been challenged by a growing body of scholarship. These new studies suggest that the influence of past events often diminishes over time: recovery, adaptation and endogenous reform are more common than rigid path dependence. And where path dependence does occur, it is more plausibly due to the population itself changing.

The argument that “extractive” institutions permanently hampered post-colonial societies has long been taken as a given. Yet longitudinal research shows that the effects of such institutions do not persist. When Robbert Maseland analysed over-time data on a sample of African countries, he found that colonial origins ceased to explain institutional quality or economic performance within a few decades after independence. This cessation is not surprising. While colonial administrators often imposed artificial boundaries and extractive institutions, these were frequently resisted, reconfigured or abandoned by post-colonial governments.

Botswana is an example of an African country whose success is due in large part to effective post-colonial policies. Unlike other countries in Africa, Botswana did not lurch leftward when it gained independence. Instead, the country adopted market-oriented policies and sought to attract Western investors. In other cases, pre-colonial factors regained explanatory power as colonial influence waned: some African countries restored the authority of chieftains over land policy and taxation. The idea that colonialism “locked countries into” a particular developmental path is increasingly untenable.

Claims about the devastating impact of colonial institutions are frequently made in regard to Latin America, where institutions like the Mit’a and encomienda are blamed for cycles of poverty in indigenous communities. However, a detailed study by Leticia Abad and Noel Maurer tells a more complex story, which points to institutional dissipation rather than persistence. In Peru, the Mit’a and encomienda systems allowed Spanish colonists to extract labor and tribute from indigenous communities—causing severe disruption during the colonial period. Yet by the mid-1800s, the institutional landscape had transformed. Communities once subjected to forced labor no longer had significantly lower rates of literacy, landholding or population density than those in unaffected areas.

Nowhere is the deep roots narrative more influential than in discussions of Africa’s slave trade. In a widely cited study, Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon argue that historical exposure to transatlantic slavery eroded social trust in Africa. They claim that fear of enslavement at the hands of one’s associates bred suspicion and undermined social cohesion—a legacy that supposedly endures to this day, thwarting economic development.

But the argument falters on both historical and empirical grounds. First, it mischaracterizes the nature of slave acquisition. As David Eltis and John Thornton argue, slave raiding was not the predominant method of enslavement. A substantial portion of slaves entered the trade through warfare, debt bondage or judicial punishment. According to Thornton, that over a third of slaves were prisoners of war. This undermines the trust theory: if enslavement occurred primarily through formal practices rather than random betrayals, why would it so distrust? Parts of southern Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia have long histories of slavery, yet do not suffer from the trust-eroding effects attributed uniquely to Africa.

There is also a logical contradiction in the Nunn–Wantchekon thesis: if trust was so deeply eroded, how were transcontinental slave trading networks maintained in the first place? The Aro Confederacy of southeastern Nigeria, dominated by the Aro-Igbo, operated a sophisticated network based on religious institutions and other enforcement mechanisms. Its influence spanned hundreds of miles, requiring coordination, communication and contractual reliability. This indicates the institutionalisation of trust rather than its absence.

Recent empirical work further undermines the trust theory. As Jean-Philippe Platteau and colleagues have shown using the Afrobarometer surveys, countries like Benin that were at the center of the slave trade do not exhibit consistently lower levels of trust than non-slave-trading countries. On some measures, Benin exhibits higher levels of trust. And when trust is disaggregated into its generalized and particularized forms (e.g., trust in strangers vs. trust in neighbors), the results remain decidedly mixed. Historical exposure to slavery does not seem to be a robust predictor of trust.

If any country should exhibit lasting economic damage from historical trauma, it is Vietnam. During the war, the US dropped more agent orange on the country than was used in all theatres of World War II. Villages were razed, infrastructure was destroyed and millions were displaced. If deep roots logic holds, Vietnam’s bombed regions should be basketcases today. Yet, as Edward Miguel and Gérard Roland have shown, there is no evidence for this. Using district-level data on bombing intensity, they find no negative long-term effects on poverty, education, health, infrastructure, or population density. Some bombed areas actually perform better than less affected areas.

The reasons for this resilience are worth considering. Post-war Vietnam implemented aggressive reconstruction programs, invested in public services, and supported internal migration to rebuild communities. What could have been a story of permanent devastation became one of rapid recovery instead. If even industrial-scale devastation does not guarantee lasting underdevelopment, then neither does slavery or colonial rule.

The case of Singapore is also at odds with the deep roots literature. During the Japanese occupation and early post-war years, corruption was endemic. Public officials, especially those in overseas postings, engaged in bribery and rent-seeking with near impunity. Theories of institutional persistence would predict that, once embedded, such practices would be difficult to undo. But Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership proved otherwise. Recognizing that corruption threatened the legitimacy of the state, his government launched a radical overhaul of Singapore’s legal and bureaucratic institutions.

At the core of these reforms was the strengthening of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Lee amended the Act to extend jurisdiction beyond Singapore’s borders. Civil servants stationed in embassies, trade offices, and international agencies could now be prosecuted at home for crimes committed abroad. This closed a major loophole and signalled that corruption would be punished no matter where it took place.

Complementing this legal change were salary reforms and a new culture of transparency. Public officials were paid competitive wages to reduce temptation, and agencies like the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau were empowered with broad investigative powers. Within a generation, Singapore transformed from a post-colonial backwater to one of the least corrupt countries in the world. The legacy of wartime graft was decisively uprooted not by time, but through clever institutional design.

The most controversial study in the deep roots is the one by Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, presenting evidence that genetic distance to the US is a major predictor of development. The argument is not that genes directly affect productivity, but rather that genetic distance proxies for cultural distance, which in turn hinders the diffusion of innovation. However, Douglas Campbell and Ju Pyun showed that once proper geographic controls are included (e.g., distance from the equator and a dummy for sub-Saharan Africa), Spolaore and Wacziarg’s result no longer reaches significance. The observed correlations, they argue, are better explained by climatic compatibility and ecological constraints.

Similarly, when Luis Angeles added share of Europeans and their descendants in the population to the model, the predictive power of genetic distance vanished. He interprets this as showing that the legal institutions and cultural practices associated with European settlement are what explain the higher levels of development in European-derived countries. However, other interpretations are obviously possible.

Indeed, the relationship between the share of Europeans in a population and economic development seems robust—which suggests that European culture and/or genes play a central role in boosting productivity. As evidence that culture matters, Vincenzo Bove and Gunes Gokmen found that one of the channels through which genetic distance stymies development is lower bilateral trade. Culturally disparate societies are less likely to trade with each other, which inhibits the transfer of technology.

Perhaps the most significant blow to the deep roots theory is methodological. Timothy Conley and Morgan Kelly re-examined thirty of the most widely cited studies in the persistence literature, and found that once spatial correlation is properly accounted for, few of the original results remain significant. Studies in the literature tend to rely on geographically clustered data, where both the historical “treatment” (e.g., slave exports) and the present-day “outcome” (e.g., trust) are spatially correlated. In such cases, proximity alone, rather than a causal relationship, can generate spurious correlations.

The deep roots literature offers a compelling story: that the economic destinies of nations were determined by events dozens or even hundreds of years ago. But as the latest research makes clear, this narrative is at best incomplete and at worst simply wrong. From Peru to Singapore, we see that institutions can dissolve, recover and reform. The persistence framework compresses decades or centuries of institutional change into simple, path-dependent trajectories—ignoring political agency. While sometimes constrained by genes or geography, societies can and do remake themselves.

Lipton Matthews is a research professional and YouTuber. His work has been featured by the Mises Institute, The Epoch Times and Chronicles. He is the author of The Corporate Myth. You can reach him at: lo_matthews@yahoo.com

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