Reassessing Colonial Origins: A Decolonial Review of Four Books on Global Inequality

The colonial origins of development paradigm have generated important explanations for unequal development in the Global South. Through a review of four recently published books, I critique the colonial origins framework to highlight its limitations. I first critique the colonial origins paradigm for its empirical focus on variation among formerly colonized countries, which obscures the large-scale and enduring inequalities between states in the Global South and the Global North. Secondly, I critique the colonial logic of “development,” which centers the epistemic and material dominance of the Global North and marginalizes the ways of knowing and social organization of indigenous and internally colonized subjects. I conclude by discussing the implications of these critiques for how we understand global inequality and alternative solutions articulated from the Global South.