> What does Belgium owe in terms of equipping it’s former colony to help themselves? Payback for the mass forced labor of Congolese to extract rubber? I don't

> What does Belgium owe in terms of equipping it’s former colony to help themselves? Payback for the mass forced labor of Congolese to extract rubber? I don't even live in Belgium or the Congo and we learned about atrocities committed under Leopold II in school[0]. In particular Belgian colonial authorities would cut off the hands of those who failed to meet their rubber quota. > would the Congolese have had electron microscopes but for Belgian colonialism? If their economic structure wasn't devastated by mass forced labor then yes, they might have been able to afford one. Colonialism presents no benefit to the colonized, under the British Raj "India's share of the world economy declined from 24.4% in 1700 down to 4.2% in 1950"[1]. The United States (since you mention it in your second paragraph implicitly as an example of an advanced nation) itself was founded to oppose the economic crippling that colonial rule necessitates. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India