142 Capital & Class 46(1) Leigh Gardner and Tirthankar Roy The Economic History of Colonialism, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020; 244 pp.: ISBN 9781529207644, £24.99. Reviewed by Jamin Andreas Hübner, LCC International University and the University of the People, Lithuania I came to The Economic History of Colonialism in hopes of finding a clear summary of a tantalizingly controversial and complicated history. This was needed after sifting through dozens of others on the subject for a book chapter I am authoring on the history of capi- talism. Unfortunately, it ended up being less than what I had hoped. To be fair, the book does present a scholarly, organized synthesis on recent colonialism research, and provide potentially helpful frameworks of interpretation. On the origins of colonialism, for example, the authors look at the following four patterns: (1) political engineering and acquisitions ‘with no visible economic motivation to drive the process’ (p. 25); 1 (2) trade and commerce; (3) settler colonialism; and (4) island settler colonial- ism (oddly said to originate in the 1600s, not 1400–1500s). They also draw distinctions between direct and ‘indirect’ rule, and everything in between. Chapters cover the basic economic effects and contours of colonialism, debates on why and how certain colonies did well (or poorly) economically, the effects of institutions and environmental conse- quences, and the relationship between colonialism, business and empires. The authors emphasize the diversity of colonial modes or expressions and avoid oversimplifications (i.e. that Britain simply did what it wanted). The book also has a helpful glossary in the front matter. To be accurate, however, The Economic History of Colonialism should rather be titled The Economic History of Recent British Colonialism Mostly From the Perspective of the Colonizer. While the book claims at various points to be offering a ‘non-eurocentric’ perspective, its focus on only the last two centuries of colonialism, on primarily Great Britain’s influence on India and Africa (the authors’ specialties), and a noticeably insensi- tive approach to a frequently bloody and violent history, betrays an unfortunately ordi- nary, limited and uncritical approach – that is to say, Eurocentric as usual. The selection of three maps in the front matter of the book – Asia in 1914, India in 1939 and Africa in 1914 – indicate this focus. As such, virtually nothing is said about the colonization of the Americas. In fact, uninformed readers may easily walk away with the impression that the largest and most invasive colonial project of all – the conquering of North and South America from the 1400s to 1800s by the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and eventually British – has virtually nothing to do with ‘colonialism’. 2 These catastrophic events only appear in pass- ing references as, for example, ‘land grabs’ (pp. 114–116). The colonized of the Americas are therefore heard even less. The authors frequently lament how difficult it is to know how colonization affected specific Indigenous peo- ples and economies. The trouble with this view is that it often simply isn’t. There are endless volumes on Indigenous history – not to mention survivors who are still alive and bear eye-witness testimony. There are monuments, educational centres, institutes