First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

3A Exmouth House

Pine Street

London EC1R 0JH

www.profilebooks.com

First published in the United States of America in 2012 by

Crown Publishers, a division of Random House Inc.

Copyright © Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Book design by Leonard Henderson

Maps by Melissa Dell

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Clays, Bungay, Suffolk

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part

of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system,

or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright

owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 84668 429 6

Export edition ISBN 978 1 84668 610 8

eISBN 978 1 84765 461 8

The paper this book is printed on is certified by the © 1996 Forest Stewardship

Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient-forest friendly. The printer holds FSC chain of custody

SGS-COC-2061

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