More generally, the Colombo Plan functioned as a foreign relations laboratory in which knowledge about other peoples and places could accumulate, new professional networks could be built and ideas could be tested.

The Introduction outlines the central themes of economic history, focusing on the efficient use of resources and its implications for welfare. It explains how societies have historically used natural, human and manufactured resources to improve living standards, exploring the critical roles of technology and institutions in driving efficiency and growth. The chapter introduces the concept of total factor productivity as a measure of economic efficiency, and emphasizes how historical developments have shaped the wealth of nations. It also links economic history to contemporary concerns by discussing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and their relevance to resource management and welfare. By tracing historical improvements in efficiency and productivity, the Introduction sets the stage for understanding how economic history informs modern debates on sustainability and inequality.

This chapter examines economic growth in pre-industrial Europe, focusing on the agricultural sector as the primary driver of progress. It explores how technological innovations in farming, such as crop rotation and selective breeding, allowed for sustained economic growth despite limited resources. The chapter also discusses the Great Divergence, a period in which Europe’s economic development began to outpace that of other regions, and investigates the factors behind this phenomenon. By analysing the nature of pre-industrial growth, the chapter demonstrates how advances in agriculture and slow, but continuous, technological progress in other sectors provided the basis for Europe’s later industrialization. It highlights the importance of both internal and external factors in shaping Europe’s economic trajectory.

This chapter examines the long-term development of inequality in Europe, focusing on disparities between individuals, households and nations. It explores how social and economic inequalities have evolved over time, influenced by economic forces as well as factors such as gender, race and class. The chapter also considers global inequality, discussing the gap between rich and poor nations and the factors that have contributed to economic divergence or convergence. By analysing the historical roots of inequality and the role of institutions in mitigating or exacerbating it, the chapter provides insights into the social and economic consequences of unequal income distribution and how it shapes economic policy debates today.

Through mapping the sociological origins of Palestinian doctors: their birthplace, class and family origin, early educational background, and university education, this chapter shows the social transformations of Palestinian communities during the late Ottoman and Mandate periods. It traces the development of the professional classes, from landed, mercantile, and religious notability, which converted, and sometimes supplemented, existing economic and cultural capital into professional education. It argues that throughout the Mandate period, the social origins of the professional community diversified to include families and individuals who gained mobility through sociocultural and economic capital. The chapter also looks at secondary and higher education as a meeting ground for the formation of lifelong professional and personal networks on a regional scale, as doctors were one of the only groups educated outside Palestine. The chapter builds on quantitative analysis of biographical data of about 400 doctors who worked in Palestine. Sources include biographical dictionaries, biographies and autobiographies, and various educational and employment lists.

This chapter illuminates the impact of the 1948 war on the Palestinian medical community and locates its role in assisting their communities during the Nakba. Within a few months, the British administration withdrew its funding from all governmental health services, most Palestinian Arab doctors were displaced, and casualties mounted. Observing the medical profession during the war, this chapter follows heroic stories of perseverance. Lacking any state structures or national independent institutions, however, these efforts were necessarily localized and short-lived, suffering from a severe lack of supplies. Largely dependent on private practice, the Arab medical profession in Palestine began unionizing only three years before the war and had limited resources of its own. The chapter reviews the resources mobilized to deal with these challenges and the community’s fate following the Nakba.

Chapter 5 provides an overview of the development of the International Council on Archives and its role mediating custodial disputes over colonial archives. This chapter, admittedly, interrupts the book’s narrative. Chronologically, it covers the late 1940s through the 1970s and largely examines the council’s main conferences during the period in order to trace the emergence of the notion of the “migrated archives” and debates over their custody. Like the role of international organizations themselves, this chapter is significant but somewhat detached from the realm of everyday activity surrounding Kenya’s “migrated archives.” However, as is demonstrated by the chapter, it provided important resources with which former colonies advocated the return of political documents as a matter of postcolonial sovereignty. These advocacy efforts were stalled by the reconfiguration of imperial hegemony upon which the International Council on Archives was based.

Chapter 4 widens the view on those interested in controlling Kenya’s colonial-era documents at the time leading up to and directly following political independence to include British and US-American academics and the formation of area studies. It historicizes the formation of archival collections in Nairobi, Oxford, Syracuse, and London as the result of entangled interests held by Oxford and Syracuse Universities, the British colonial government in Kenya, the Department of Technical Co-operation, and the Colonial Office, namely, its Intelligence and Security Department. By claiming colonial-era documentation as archival rather than as a political record with current relevance for incoming African ministers, these institutions scrambled to collate and control colonial-era documents for different purposes but all through the exclusion of African partners.