Spain was but one of several European powers that embarked on overseas colonization projects. Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal all controlled their own colonies in Africa, Asia, or the Americas. No one denies that different colonizing nations left distinctive legacies in their subject territories, such as their own European language. But recently, influential work on colonialism tells us that which European power colonized a particular territory did not matter in other critical ways. Any institutional differences among the European nations did not, according to these arguments, affect the political-economic institutions that were established in the colonies. Nor did differences across the European powers have any discernable impact on long-run development outcomes. Instead, variations in development outcomes are explained solely on the basis of differences in the precolonial territories themselves.

Yet such arguments about the irrelevance of colonizer identity cannot be sustained. In the keynote passage for this chapter, Adam Smith provides one set of reasons why.