 Finally, colonialism gives rise to claims that the distribution of wealth globally ought to be re-ordered in order to satisfy the demands of rectificatory global justice. The claim is that rich nations in general, or colonizing nations in particular, ought to transfer wealth or other valuable resources to poor nations in general or colonized nations in particular in virtue of the legacy of colonialism. It is important to see that these claims to rectification tend to be predicated upon the idea that there are contemporary effects of colonial relations. For example, the “new institutionalists” (Acemoglu &amp; Robinson 2012) suggest that differences in development are a consequence of geographically driven differences in colonial history. In some cases, the colonial powers—often in the context of settler colonialism—set up relatively effective institutions with the rule of law and strong property rights. In other contexts, the colonial powers set up extractive institutions. These extractive institutions set up strong incentive structures for the “liberated” de-colonized elites to maintain the extractive nature of these institutions, inhibiting development. This is often encouraged—through corruption, military intervention, and less obviously criminal economic manipulation—by the former colonial powers themselves. As a consequence, the initial extractive equilibrium is hard to dispel. This account creates a complication for rectificatory views, which is that this view relies on the bad actions of local elites to sustain the equilibrium and so complicates the question of who, precisely, is responsible for the poor current state of many states (Lomasky &amp; Tesón 2015). Nonetheless, many have argued that the contemporary effects—whether though the imposition of institutional forms or debt—of colonialism generates a special obligation to provide, for example, debt relief (Jaggar 2002), open borders (Amighetti &amp; Nuti 2016) or additional emissions permits (Blomfield 2015). Yet, these views face some significant hurdles. They have difficulty in generating a general obligation by rich nations to help poor nations; rather, they generate obligations for colonizing states to help their former colonies. And while it may be true these relations mostly track the needs of the present, there is no requirement that they do so and, indeed, there seem to be cases where the requirement to assist needy countries and the requirement to help nations that have been negatively affected by colonialism conflict. So, rectificatory views must either accept that sometimes states will be obligated to rectify in cases where the objects of the obligation are not particularly needy or need to suggest that a broader participation in an ongoing system of neo-colonial economic relations is sufficient to activate the obligations. Yet, if we adopt this latter interpretation, then it is unclear that this view is truly different from left institutionalist views described above. If the former, then the claims of colonialism do not appear to be as urgent as distributive obligations. Furthermore, the nature of the claim to compensation depends on characterizing the relevant baseline: are we comparing the plight of the former colonies to how they would have been without colonization or a world where the colonizers acted justly? Each of these answers have their issues, with the former being too permissive towards colonialism and the latter collapsing into other views of justice. It is hard to deny that the legacy of colonialism is significant in a variety of applied issues—from trade to climate change to humanitarian intervention—and the growing interest in its effects and normative consequences is a welcome development; the philosophical difficulties of addressing that legacy, however, are likely to prove difficult indeed.