> Which countries are you referring to? It's the next sentence: Germany, Austria. Belgium indeed went on a bit of an exploitation spree. But it's never been n

> Which countries are you referring to? It's the next sentence: Germany, Austria. Belgium indeed went on a bit of an exploitation spree. But it's never been notably wealthier than its neighbours. (Of course the king got some nice palaces, but that's not country-level wealth.) Instead the industrial part of Belgium was wealthy in the same era that the nearby industrial part parts of France were (and Detroit was). Now that's rust-belt poor, and the wealthy bits are tracking Holland. These patterns seem hard to explain by referring to the (very real) evils of the congo empire.