In the Catholic countries of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Europe, communities of monks and nuns were growing in number and wealth. By 1750 there were at least 25,000 communities containing at least 350,000 inmates. They constructed vast buildings, dominated education, and played a large part in the practice and patronage of learning, music, and the arts. They also fulfilled an amazing variety of political, economic and social roles, notably in providing career opportunities for women. Yet many accounts of the period ignore them altogether. Prosperity and Plunder recovers this forgotten dimension of European history, assesses the importance of monasteries across Catholic Europe, and compares their position in different countries. It goes on to explain the almost complete destruction of the monasteries between 1750 and 1815 through reforming rulers, 'Enlightenment', and the French Revolution, and asks how much society gained and lost in the process.

A Region of Regimes traces the relationship between politics and economics—power and prosperity—in the Asia-Pacific in the decades since the Second World War. This book complicates familiar and incomplete narratives of the "Asian economic miracle" to show radically different paths leading to high growth for many but abject failure for some. T. J. Pempel analyzes policies and data from ten East Asian countries, categorizing them into three distinct regime types, each historically contingent and the product of specific configurations of domestic institutions, socio-economic resources, and external support. Pempel identifies Japan, Korea, and Taiwan as developmental regimes, showing how each then diverged due to domestic and international forces. North Korea, Myanmar, and the Philippines (under Marcos) comprise "rapacious regimes" in this analysis, while Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand form "ersatz developmental regimes." Uniquely, China emerges as an evolving hybrid of all three regime types. A Region of Regimes concludes by showing how the shifting interactions of these regimes have profoundly shaped the Asia-Pacific region and the globe across the postwar era.

Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion was greeted as groundbreaking when it appeared in 2007, winning the Estoril Distinguished Book Prize, the Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize. Now, in The Plundered Planet, Collier builds upon his renowned work on developing countries and the world's poorest populations to confront the global mismanagement of natural resources. Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency: natural resources have the potential either to transform the poorest countries or to tear them apart, while the carbon emissions and agricultural follies of the developed world could further impoverish them. The Plundered Planet charts a course between unchecked profiteering on the one hand and environmental romanticism on the other to offer realistic and sustainable solutions to dauntingly complex issues. Grounded in a belief in the power of informed citizens, Collier proposes a series of international standards that would help poor countries rich in natural assets better manage those resources, policy changes that would raise world food supply, and a clear-headed approach to climate change that acknowledges the benefits of industrialization while addressing the need for alternatives to carbon trading. Revealing how all of these forces interconnect, The Plundered Planet charts a way forward to avoid the mismanagement of the natural world that threatens our future.

Based on long-term research in northern Chad, this book provides a unique account of mobility, wealth, and aspirations to political autonomy at the heart of the contemporary Sahara.

The economy is in shambles. Riots and demonstrations in the streets have become daily occurrences worldwide. The unemployment rate is staggering, global debt is out of control, and the world is paralyzed in the grip of terror. What in the world is going on? What if all of this could be happening just for your benefit as a Christian believer? What if we are experiencing a great global orchestration of God's ability, plan and purpose to transfer the immense wealth of the world into the hands of those who serve Him? And what if this prosperity phenomenon forecasted in Scripture has already begun? Dr. Don G. Pickney's ministry is dedicated to proving that on the fateful day of September 11, 2001, the Lord of hosts began to unfold a biblical prophetic event revealed in Scripture as the Day of Jehovah Tsaba, during which He would plunder the nations of their "created glory"--their wealth, goods, substance, means, men and other resources--converting it into the hands of the righteous, a happening already being widely forecasted in charismatic Christianity. Insightful and thought provoking, A Prosperity Phenomenon will offer you a renewed sense of hope in the midst of global turmoil. This God-given message of purpose and prosperity will encourage you to face uncertain times in a different light, reminding you that God is in control and faithful to those who love Him.

The study of natural resource extraction in resource-rich countries often shows that plunder, rather than prosperity, has become the norm. Management of natural resources differs widely in every state; a close examination of the decision making chains in various states highlights the key principles that need to be followed to avoid distortion and dependence. This book consists of eight case studies investigating the political economy of the decision chain, revealing where various states have met with success, or failed disastrously. This original research provides a unique insight into how different countries have handled their resource extraction. This book is essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers working across development economics and natural resource economics.

A deconstruction of the neoliberal placations about global capitalism, exposing the inequalities of global poverty “We’re making headway on global poverty,” trills Bill Gates. “Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues,” reports the World Bank. “How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?” inquires The Economist. Seth Donnelly answers: “It didn’t!” In fact, according to Donnelly, virtually nothing about these glad tidings proclaiming plummeting global poverty rates is true. It’s just that trend-setting neoliberal experts and institutions need us to believe that global capitalism, now unfettered in the wake of the Cold War and bolstered by Information Technology, has ushered in a new phase of international human prosperity. This short book deconstructs the assumption that global poverty has fallen dramatically, and lays bare the spurious methods of poverty measurement and data on which the dominant prosperity narrative depends. Here is carefully researched documentation that global poverty—and the inequalities and misery that flourish within it—remains massive, afflicting the majority of the world’s population. Donnelly goes further to analyze just how global poverty, rather than being reduced, is actually reproduced by the imperatives of capital accumulation on a global scale. Just as the global, environmental catastrophe cannot be resolved within capitalism, rooted as it is in contemporary mechanisms of exploitation and plunder, neither can human poverty be effectively eliminated by neoliberal “advances.”