A Brief History of Enlightened Oppression

The competing demands of progress and liberty have long caused tension in liberal thought, especially in regard to relations between the West and the Rest. Bill Easterly’s marvelous new book, Violent Saviors, charts this ambivalence through the rise and fall of colonialism and up to the present day. Despite this historical reach, the questions it raises are contemporary and urgent.

Easterly retired earlier this month after a career as a development economist at the World Bank and, since 2003, as an eminent scholar at New York University. (Disclosure: He’s also an old friend.) His new book is quite the parting gift. It returns to issues he explored in The Elusive Quest for Growth, The White Man’s Burden, and The Tyranny of Experts, restating his long-held, often controversial, skepticism about successive development fads and nostrums. But this time he sets those issues in the context of centuries-long arguments about liberalism — arguments that are far from resolved and transcend quarrels over development.