Understanding the Gains to Capitalists from Colonization: Lessons from Robert E. Lucas, Jr., Karl Marx and Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Edwyna Harris () and Sumner La Croix
Additional contact information
Edwyna Harris: Monash University

No 202023, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: Britain after the Napoleonic wars saw the rise of colonial reformers, such as Edward Wakefield, who had extensive influence on British colonial policy. A version of Wakefield’s “System of Colonization” became the basis for legislation establishing the South Australia colony in 1834 and the New Zealand colony in 1840. We use extended versions of Robert Lucas’s 1990 model of coordinated colonial investment to show how Wakefield’s institutions were designed to work. We also show that the critique of Wakefield’s system by Karl Marx in Das Kapital closely follows Lucas’s analysis of colonial institutions.

Keywords: Robert Lucas; Karl Marx; Edward Gibbon Wakefield; emigration; settler colonization; South Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 N47 N57 N97 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_20-23.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Understanding the gains to capitalists from colonization: Lessons from Robert E. Lucas, Jr., Karl Marx and Edward Gibbon Wakefield (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hai:wpaper:202023

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.economics ... esearch/working.html

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Web Technician ().