Lundahl's study, first published in 1983, asks why a country as poor as Haiti has an economy that has performed so badly, and answers by setting the question in historical perspective.

Agriculture carries the weight of the analysis. Lundahl examines how farm production is structured, explains why the land yields so little, and shows that farming has failed to provide people with an adequate standard of living. The backwardness of agricultural technology gets its own account.

The political conclusion is blunt: no government since 1820 has taken economic development seriously, because vested interests step in reliably enough to discourage new projects before they get anywhere.