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Germany had colonies. East European countries are not rich. East India Company was the most profitable corporation in the history of humanity. It accumulated th
by anticodon 7y ago
Germany had colonies. East European countries are not rich. East India Company was the most profitable corporation in the history of humanity. It accumulated the wealth much greater than any of the current corporations. And contemporary corporations wealth is mostly ones and zeroes increased arbitrarily with ever increasing speed.
- iguy 7y agoGermany had a few overseas colonies, late in the game. And boy did they resent it. Eastern Europe is not as rich as the west, but is not all that far behind -- Poland has the GDP that the UK had in about 1987 (says google). And of course got deeply massively trodden on in a way that certainly wasn't colonialism, rather more recently than most ex-colonies. The East India companies were indeed large for their time, the biggest companies ever until canals & railways got invented. But it's hard to comprehend how small the scale of commerce was then, the sum of all long-distance trade was a few containers. Enough to make a few well-positioned men very wealthy indeed, they built some nice mansions. But not countries.