Research Note: Measuring the Impacts of Colonialism: A New Data Set for the Countries of Africa and Asia

We present a new dataset with 15 indicators for the political, economic and social impact of colonialism. This dataset and our four indices for the impact of colonialism create for the first time the opportunity to compare directly the levels of colonial transformation for a sample of 83 African and Asian countries. Some of our exploratory findings on the interrelation of the dimensions show that in British colonies political domination was in general less direct and less violent. Plantation colonies experienced more investment in infrastructure and more violence during decolonization. The correlations between indicators for economic distortion (trade policy, trade and FDI concentration) show that the economic re-direction of some colonies towards a more exclusive exchange with the metropole country was an interdependent process. In general, a more intense political domination came along with a higher level of economic transformation. If an area was transformed economically, however, a social transformation was likely to take place too, but these processes should not be confounded. In areas that were politically united for the first time under colonialism, economic distortion and social transformation were more profound.

本研究构建了一套包含15项指标的全新数据集，用于衡量殖民主义在政治、经济与社会层面产生的影响。本数据集连同我们提出的4项殖民主义影响指数，首次为直接比较83个亚非国家样本的殖民改造程度提供了可能。我们针对各维度间关联性开展的探索性研究发现：整体而言，英国殖民地的政治统治普遍更具间接性，暴力程度更低；种植园型殖民地在去殖民化进程中获得了更多基础设施投资，同时伴随了更为剧烈的暴力冲突。经济扭曲指标（涵盖贸易政策、贸易集中度与外商直接投资（FDI）集中度）之间的相关性显示，部分殖民地将经济发展方向调整为与宗主国开展更具排他性的贸易往来，这一进程具有相互依存性。总体而言，政治统治强度越高，对应的经济改造程度也往往越深。但若某一区域实现了经济改造，则其社会改造也大概率会同步推进，但二者不应被混为一谈。在殖民统治时期首次实现政治统一的区域，其经济扭曲程度与社会改造幅度均更为显著。