Book Review: Andrew Brooks. The End of Development.

A Global History of Poverty and

Development. London: Zed Books, 2017. 208pp. ISBN: 978-1786990211. $95.00 cloth.

Reviewed by Ronaldo Munck, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland, E-mail:

ronnie.munck@dcu.ie https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2018-0002 Q1 Q2

As Gustavo Esteva says in his endorsement of this book “it is very difficult to say something

new about development.” I am not sure that The End of Development does actually say

something “new” as Esteva claims but it is certainly an extremely clear and accessible

overview of global capitalist development. It also makes sure that no one should confuse

this understanding of development with International Development understood as a rich

country policy towards poor ones after the Second World War. This is an important starting

point because in many ‘development studies’ textbooks and development agency

discourses development is treated as one and indivisible. It is also usually presented as a

process that no right-minded person could be against, playing to a general public antipathy

towards poverty and inequality. This book starts at the beginning quite appropriately.

Brooks is very good on explaining why “the natural environment” cannot in itself explain

different development paths. He also assembles recent evidence to trace the movement

from hunter gatherers to farmers across the globe. Against the mainstream of

modernization and many Marxist accounts he shows how Europe was not uniquely blessed

with a favourable environment. Nor are “poor countries in Africa in poverty because of an

absence of natural resources, or a harsh climate, or a physical landscape unsuited to

economic development” (237). It was European settlement in the Americas that was to lead

to a new global economy as capitalism became the dominant mode of production. Slavery,
argues Brooks as many have before, “was partly an outcome of the success of colonial

capitalism, but also a precondition for the Industrial Revolution” (63). Against all Eurocentric

accounts of the transition from feudalism to capitalism (including many Marxist ones) the

stress is laid on the symbiosis between capitalist development and colonialism. For the

contemporary period Brooks paints on a wide ranging canvas with both broad strokes and

detailed case studies to bolster the general argument. He is most familiar with sub-Saharan

Africa so it is not surprising that many of the case studies are from that region. There is, for

example, a clear account of the so-called resource curse that has affected the ‘petro-states’

such as Angola and Nigeria in terms of the rentier state theory. There is also a useful

explanation of the ‘Dutch disease’ whereby windfalls form natural resources, which are seen

to undermine other areas of the economy. There is a cogent demystification of the post

2000 sudden enthusiasm for the ‘Africa Rising’ thesis. A high point is the treatment of

Malawi that foregrounds the political dimension against the continuous attempt by the

‘development industry’ to depoliticize development. The global economy, the

multinationals, the aid industry and African politics are examined in a holistic and critical

manner that is most illuminating.

The End of Development is also very good, in my opinion, in dealing with China. The recent

emergence of China as a global economic power is set in its proper historic context going

back to the ‘great leap forward’ of the early 1960’s. The brutal exploitation of labour during

the recent leap forward in the 1990’s is highlighted which many orthodox economic growth

theories tend to gloss over. It becomes clear that this particular path to capitalist

development owes little to the neo-liberal orthodoxy that prevailed in the West. This

particularity or specificity also becomes clear when Brooks deals with Chinese involvement

in Africa, the subject of much horrified Western attention. It is also set in the historical
context of China’s close involvement in the national liberation struggle of some

countries. The so-called ‘Angola model’ consisting of swaps of infrastructure

funding for access to natural resources is simply different – not necessarily

better or worse – than the Western aid and continued neo-colonialism model.

The ‘end of development’ does not refer to capitalist development but, rather,

the fading of the Western modernization model in the global South. This has

been said many times before by the post development theorists but this book

deploys careful data and not just rhetoric.

This book fits within a genre of accessible economics texts such as those of

Joseph Stiglitz and Naomi Klein, for example, which in very different ways seek

to popularize well researched critical positions. For me, Andrew Brooks has hit

the mark with this book, but that may be because I am largely in agreement with

his underlying theoretical and political framework. Capitalist development is

uneven, slavery and the industrial revolution are inter-linked and the ‘development

industry’ is anything but beneficial to the Third World. There are a couple

of criticisms. The need to tell a story leads him to use the term ‘dictatorship’ for a

very wide range of countries to the extent that it is diluted. Secondly it is a rather

U.S.- directed text (in terms of the reference points it gives the reader), and Latin

America does not figure at all in a story to which it could have added considerably

to in terms of non-Western development models and post-neoliberal politics.