influenced the extent to which Africans trusted others
historically.
What about Max Weber’s Protestant ethic? Though it
may be true that predominantly Protestant countries, such
as the Netherlands and England, were the first economic
successes of the modern era, there is little relationship
between religion and economic success. France, a
predominantly Catholic country, quickly mimicked the
economic performance of the Dutch and English in the
nineteenth century, and Italy is as prosperous as any of
these nations today. Looking farther east, you’ll see that
none of the economic successes of East Asia have
anything to do with any form of Christian religion, so there is
not much support for a special relationship between
Protestantism and economic success there, either.
Let’s turn to a favorite area for the enthusiasts of the
culture hypothesis: the Middle East. Middle Eastern
countries are primarily Islamic, and the non–oil producers
among them are very poor, as we have already noted. Oil
producers are richer, but this windfall of wealth has done
little to create diversified modern economies in Saudi
Arabia or Kuwait. Don’t these facts show convincingly that
religion matters? Though plausible, this argument is not
right, either. Yes, countries such as Syria and Egypt are
poor, and their populations are primarily Muslim. But these
countries also systemically differ in other ways that are far
more important for prosperity. For one, they were all
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which heavily, and
adversely, shaped the way they developed. After Ottoman
rule collapsed, the Middle East was absorbed into the
English and French colonial empires, which, again, stunted
their possibilities. After independence, they followed much
of the former colonial world by developing hierarchical,
authoritarian political regimes with few of the political and
economic institutions that, we will argue, are crucial for
generating economic success. This development path was
forged largely by the history of Ottoman and European rule.
The relationship between the Islamic religion and poverty in
the Middle East is largely spurious.
The role of these historical events, rather than cultural
factors, in shaping the Middle East’s economic trajectory is
also seen in the fact that the parts of the Middle East that