Abstract

This article assesses the relative merits of the “reversal of fortune” thesis, according to which the most politically and economically advanced polities of the precolonial era were subject to institutional reversal by European colonial powers, and the “persistence of fortune” view, according to which early advantages in state formation persisted throughout and beyond the colonial era. Discussing the respective arguments, the article offers a synthesis: the effect of early state formation on development trajectories was subject to a threshold condition. Non-European states at the highest levels of precolonial political centralization were able to resist European encroachment and engage in defensive modernization, whereas states closest to, yet just below, this threshold were the most attractive targets for colonial exploitation. Since the onset of decolonization, however, such polities have been among the first to regain independence and world patterns of state capacity are increasingly reverting to those of the precolonial era.