Why Nations Fail

8.
NOT ON OUR TURF: BARRIERS TO DEVELOPMENT
N
O
 P
RINTING
 A
LLOWED
I
N 1445 IN THE
G
ERMAN
city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg
unveiled an innovation with profound consequences for
subsequent economic history: a printing press based on
movable type. Until then, books either had to be hand-
copied by scribes, a very slow and laborious process, or
they were block-printed with specific pieces of wood cut for
printing each page. Books were few and far between, and
very expensive. After Gutenberg’s invention, things began
to change. Books were printed and became more readily
available. Without this innovation, mass literacy and
education would have been impossible.
In Western Europe, the importance of the printing press
was quickly recognized. In 1460 there was already a
printing press across the border, in Strasbourg, France. By
the late 1460s the technology had spread throughout Italy,
with presses in Rome and Venice, soon followed by
Florence, Milan, and Turin. By 1476 William Caxton had set
up a printing press in London, and two years later there
was one in Oxford. During the same period, printing spread
throughout the Low Countries, into Spain, and even into
Eastern Europe, with a press opening in Budapest in 1473
and in Cracow a year later.
Not everyone saw printing as a desirable innovation. As
early as 1485 the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II issued an edict
that Muslims were expressly forbidden from printing in
Arabic. This rule was further reinforced by Sultan Selim I in
1515. It was not until 1727 that the first printing press was
allowed in the Ottoman lands. Then Sultan Ahmed III issued
a decree granting İbrahim Müteferrika permission to set up
a press. Even this belated step was hedged with restraints.
Though the decree noted “the fortunate day this Western
technique will be unveiled like a bride and will not again be

---

hidden,” Müteferrika’s printing was going to be closely
monitored. The decree stated:
so that the printed books will be free from
printing mistakes, the wise, respected and
meritorious religious scholars specializing in
Islamic Law, the excellent Kadi of Istanbul,
Mevlana İshak, and Selaniki’s Kadi, Mevlana
Sahib, and Galata’s Kadi, Mevlana Asad,
may their merits be increased, and from the
illustrious religious orders, the pillar of the
righteous religious scholars, the Sheykh of
the Kasim Paşa Mevlevihane, Mevlana
Musa, may his wisdom and knowledge
increase, will oversee the proofreading.
Müteferrika was allowed to set up a printing press, but
whatever he printed had to be vetted by a panel of three
religious and legal scholars, the Kadis. Maybe the wisdom
and knowledge of the Kadis, like everybody else’s, would
have increased much faster had the printing press been
more readily available. But that was not to be, even after
Müteferrika was given permission to set up his press.
Not surprisingly Müteferrika printed few books in the end,
only seventeen between 1729, when the press began to
operate, and 1743, when he stopped working. His family
tried to continue the tradition, but they managed to print only
another seven books by the time they finally gave up in
1797. Outside of the core of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey,
printing lagged even further behind. In Egypt, for instance,
the first printing press was set up only in 1798, by
Frenchmen who were part of the abortive attempt by
Napoleon Bonaparte to capture the country. Until well into
the second half of the nineteenth century, book production
in the Ottoman Empire was still primarily undertaken by
scribes hand-copying existing books. In the early
eighteenth century, there were reputed to be eighty
thousand such scribes active in Istanbul.
This opposition to the printing press had the obvious
consequences for literacy, education, and economic
success. In 1800 probably only 2 to 3 percent of the citizens
of the Ottoman Empire were literate, compared with 60

---

percent of adult males and 40 percent of adult females in
England. In the Netherlands and Germany, literacy rates
were even higher. The Ottoman lands lagged far behind the
European countries with the lowest educational attainment
in this period, such as Portugal, where probably only
around 20 percent of adults could read and write.
Given the highly absolutist and extractive Ottoman
institutions, the sultan’s hostility to the printing press is easy
to understand. Books spread ideas and make the
population much harder to control. Some of these ideas
may be valuable new ways to increase economic growth,
but others may be subversive and challenge the existing
political and social status quo. Books also undermine the
power of those who control oral knowledge, since they
make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can
master literacy. This threatened to undermine the existing
status quo, where knowledge was controlled by elites. The
Ottoman sultans and religious establishment feared the
creative destruction that would result. Their solution was to
forbid printing.
T
HE
I
NDUSTRIAL
R
EVOLUTION
created a critical juncture that
affected almost every country. Some nations, such as
England, not only allowed, but actively encouraged,
commerce, industrialization, and entrepreneurship, and
grew rapidly. Many, such as the Ottoman Empire, China,
and other absolutist regimes, lagged behind as they
blocked or at the very least did nothing to encourage the
spread of industry. Political and economic institutions
shaped the response to technological innovation, creating
once again the familiar pattern of interaction between
existing institutions and critical junctures leading to
divergence in institutions and economic outcomes.
The Ottoman Empire remained absolutist until it
collapsed at the end of the First World War, and was thus
able to successfully oppose or impede innovations such as
the printing press and the creative destruction that would
have resulted. The reason that the economic changes that
took place in England did not happen in the Ottoman
Empire is the natural connection between extractive,
absolutist political institutions and extractive economic

---

institutions. Absolutism is rule unconstrained by law or the
wishes of others, though in reality absolutists rule with the
support of some small group or elite. In nineteenth-century
Russia, for example, the tsars were absolutist rulers
supported by a nobility that represented about 1 percent of
the total population. This narrow group organized political
institutions to perpetuate their power. There was no
Parliament or political representation of other groups in
Russian society until 1905, when the tsar created the
Duma, though he quickly undermined what few powers he
had given to it. Unsurprisingly, economic institutions were
extractive, organized to make the tsar and nobility as
wealthy as possible. The basis of this, as of many
extractive economic systems, was a mass system of labor
coercion and control, in the particularly pernicious form of
Russian serfdom.
Absolutism was not the only type of political institution
preventing industrialization. Though absolutist regimes
were not pluralistic and feared creative destruction, many
had centralized states, or at least states that were
centralized enough to impose bans on innovations such as
the printing press. Even today, countries such as
Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nepal have national states that lack
political centralization. In sub-Saharan Africa the situation is
even worse. As we argued earlier, without a centralized
state to provide order and enforce rules and property rights,
inclusive institutions could not emerge. We will see in this
chapter that in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (for
example, Somalia and southern Sudan) a major barrier to
industrialization was the lack of any form of political
centralization. 
Without 
these 
natural 
prerequisites,
industrialization had no chance of getting off the ground.
Absolutism and a lack of, or weak, political centralization
are two different barriers to the spread of industry. But they
are also connected; both are kept in place by fear of
creative destruction and because the process of political
centralization often creates a tendency toward absolutism.
Resistance to political centralization is motivated by
reasons similar to resistance to inclusive political
institutions: fear of losing political power, this time to the
newly centralizing state and those who control it. We saw in
the previous chapter how the process of political

---

centralization under the Tudor monarchy in England
increased demands for voice and representation by
different local elites in national political institutions as a way
of staving off this loss of political power. A stronger
Parliament was created, ultimately enabling the emergence
of inclusive political institutions.
But in many other cases, just the opposite takes place,
and the process of political centralization also ushers in an
era of greater absolutism. This is illustrated by the origins
of Russian absolutism, which was forged by Peter the
Great between 1682 and his death in 1725. Peter built a
new capital at Saint Petersburg, stripping away power from
the old aristocracy, the Boyars, in order to create a modern
bureaucratic state and modern army. He even abolished
the Boyar Duma that had made him tsar. Peter introduced
the Table of Ranks, a completely new social hierarchy
whose essence was service to the tsar. He also took
control over the Church, just as Henry VIII did when
centralizing the state in England. With this process of
political centralization, Peter was taking power away from
others and redirecting it toward himself. His military reforms
led the traditional royal guards, the Streltsy, to rebel. Their
revolt was followed by others, such as the Bashkirs in
Central Asia and the Bulavin Rebellion. None succeeded.
Though 
Peter 
the 
Great’s 
project 
of 
political
centralization was a success and the opposition was
overcome, the type of forces that opposed state
centralization, such as the Streltsy, who saw their power
being challenged, won out in many parts of the world, and
the resulting lack of state centralization meant the
persistence of a different type of extractive political
institutions.
In this chapter, we will see how during the critical juncture
created by the Industrial Revolution, many nations missed
the boat and failed to take advantage of the spread of
industry. Either they had absolutist political and extractive
economic institutions, as in the Ottoman Empire, or they
lacked political centralization, as in Somalia.