Social trust is a driver of many important political and economic processes and outcomes, including democracy and economic development. In this project, Professor Webb Williams asks two questions about social trust: How do colonial legacies shape social trust? And how does the level and type of social trust present in a community affect the resilience that community will demonstrate in the face of unexpected disasters? She addresses these two questions by analyzing the politics, economics, and history of Kazakhstan. She finds that geographic patterns of social trust in southern Kazakhstan are linked to Imperial Russian policy decisions about colonial settlement.