Violent Saviors - by William Easterly (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A celebrated economist argues that economic development is not really development unless everyone has the right to consent to their own progress

"An innovative and exhilarating read."--Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year

For centuries, the developed Western world has exploited the less-developed "Rest" in the name of progress, conquering the Americas, driving the Atlantic slave trade, and colonizing Africa and Asia. Throughout, the West has justified this global conquest by the alleged material gains it brought to the conquered. But the colonial experiment unintentionally revealed how much of a demand there was for self-determination, and not just for relief from poverty.

In Violent Saviors, renowned economist William Easterly examines how the demand for agency has always been at the heart of debates on development. Spanning nearly four centuries of global history, Easterly argues that commerce, rather than conquest, could meet the need for equal rights as well as the need for prosperity. Looking to the liberal economic ideas of thinkers like Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Amartya Sen, Easterly shows how the surge in global trade has given agency to billions of people for the first time.

Narrating the long debate between conquest and commerce, Easterly offers a new and urgent perspective on global economics: the demands for agency, dignity, and respect must be at the center of the global fight against poverty.

Review Quotes

"Easterly presents Violent Saviors as an economic history, but it is equally a work of intellectual history. Violent Saviors tells the story of bad ideas running amok, and the good ideas that warred with the bad."--Commentary Magazine

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
A Marginal Revolution Best Book of the Year

"I liked this book very much... I think of this work as a full-throated examination and study of the classical liberal anti-imperialist tradition. We have been needing such a thing for a long time...it amazes me how well he knows this material from a historical point of view... So recommended."--Marginal Revolution

"The competing demands of progress and liberty have long caused tension in liberal thought, especially in regard to relations between the West and the Rest. Bill Easterly's marvelous new book, Violent Saviors, charts this ambivalence through the rise and fall of colonialism and up to the present day. Despite this historical reach, the questions it raises are contemporary and urgent."--Bloomberg

"Easterly's commitment to liberal ideals is powerful."--Financial Times

"Mr. Easterly accurately describes the historical ideology that would tell the conquered to shut up and 'enjoy the GDP.' But the novelty of his book lies in his bringing to light--and life--the counterblasts that came from many European skeptics of benevolent conquest, most notably Adam Smith (1723-90). The skeptics' most important point, as Mr. Easterly distills into modern political language, is that 'development without consent is not necessarily progress.'"--Wall Street Journal

"A nicely contrarian work of interest to aid organizations and policymakers everywhere."--Kirkus

"Easterly has done it again, sharply revising what we thought we knew, but didn't. He shows us the startling unity among tyrannies we imagined were distinct. A triumph of liberal thought."--Deirdre McCloskey, Cato Institute

"Violent Saviors is Bill Easterly's masterpiece. It brilliantly weaves together the self-serving and arrogant histories of the conquests, enslavements, and destructive 'assistance' the West has imposed on the Rest, showing the common patronizing thread that connects them and tracing all these hideous histories to the philosophies that justified them, which Easterly masterfully dissects. But amidst the horrors and ugliness, there is hope: some thinkers and actors, from Adam Smith to Easterly himself, insistently teach us to respect individual dignity and promote freedom as the cornerstone of all human flourishing. And Easterly reminds us that the long arc of history is on their side."--Charles Calomiris, Columbia Business School

"It is a central tenet of economics that markets produce more efficient outcomes than planning because markets aggregate information from innumerable voluntary exchanges, while planning is based on decision making by a small group of experts who cannot help but bring along their normative values. This powerful idea has a drawback, however; it leaves little role for experts, and experts have strong incentives to embrace big roles for experts. The tension between voluntary consent and expert judgement has produced levels of prosperity that were unimaginable at the founding of the discipline of economics 250 years ago, but has also produced human tragedies at vast scale. If you want to understand how this tension developed, and why it gave rise to both prosperity and tragedy, you must read Violent Saviors."--Stephen Haber, Stanford University

"Easterly writes about freedom, something that economists too often forget in their pursuit of growth and living standards. That life is about more than money and that there can be no price on the loss of freedom is a lesson that has taken the world three hundred years to learn. Adam Smith got it right, unlike most of the economists who followed him. Easterly's deep scholarship brings the story to life, celebrating the few who saw clearly, some familiar, many not. An innovative and exhilarating read."--Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

About the Author

William Easterly is a professor of economics at New York University and codirector of the NYU Development Research Institute. He is the author of four books, including The Tyranny of Experts and The White Man's Burden. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. He lives in New York.