Early Globalization and the Economic Development of the United States and Brazil. By John DeWitt. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Pp. 178

The author of this ambitious volume tackles the question: why is the United States rich and Brazil poor? Given the importance of the question and the promising comparative approach, readers of this JOURNAL will be tempted to look into John DeWitt's book. Unfortunately, they are likely to be disappointed. The author claims that internal and external factors combined to generate growth in the United States and to breed underdevelopment in Brazil. The external factors hinge on the purported unfairness of the international system. Brazil, according to DeWitt, was “a weak state that could be treated like a palooka and pummeled with impunity” (p. 113). The internal factors of growth or backwardness adduced in the book are based on a series of case studies of regions or industries, such as coastal towns or whaling, along with generalizations about plantation economics. Although there are many useful insights sprinkled throughout the book, the methodology and bibliography are confused and outdated: there are no time series or statistical tests employed in the text; quantitative data are few and almost entirely descriptive; and no mention is made of recent publications emphasizing institutions and factor endowments as sources of economic divergence between the United States and Latin America. In particular, it is troubling that no mention is made in the text or bibliography to Stephen Haber's edited volume, How Latin America Fell Behind (Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1997). This omission prevents DeWitt from addressing the standard text in the literature and severely detracts from the volume's credibility.