David Henley is professor of Contemporary Indonesia Studies at Leiden University. He obtained his doctorate from the Australian National University and has worked as lecturer at Griffith University, as researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and as research fellow at the National University of Singapore. His fields of interest are the politics, history and geography of South-East Asia, particularly Indonesia. From 2006 to 2012 he was a coordinator of Tracking Development, an international research project designed to compare Asian and African development trajectories with a view to identifying practical policy lessons for development and development cooperation in Africa.

This book addresses one of the top global issues of our time. It does so eloquently, with impeccable logic and drawing on a rich body of comparative evidence spanning sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. It deserves to be carefully read and widely discussed, especially by those shaping policies for the coming decades in Africa.

• Preface1. Diverging Paths2. Studying the Divergence3. Setting the Stage for Development4. Agrarian Roots of Development Success5. Varieties of Rural Bias6. Elements of the Developmental Mindset7. Origins of the Divergence