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Any book purporting to explain why the west was so successful without including the practices of colonialism is just utterly without merit, sorry. Enormous tran
by ahelwer 7y ago
Any book purporting to explain why the west was so successful without including the practices of colonialism is just utterly without merit, sorry. Enormous transfer of wealth and resources from the rest of the world are very handy.
- fastball 7y agoSomewhat of a chicken-and-egg problem. If the West was successful due to colonization, how is it that the West became the colonizers in the first place, and not the colonized?
- nemothekid 7y ago>how is it that the West became the colonizers in the first place The Industrial Revolution? Colonization has existed hand-in-hand with empires, the West has been colonized by Rome, Britain, France, in a massive tug-o-war. The Industrial Revolution took that fight global. There's a clear "egg" here.
- Uhuhreally 7y agoeasy. Imagine twin brothers each with identical wealth and then one of them steals the other one's money. Now one has twice the wealth of the other.
- fastball 7y agoIf my brother stole from me, I'd steal it back. If that failed, I could always kill him. Why couldn't the colonized do the same? The Europeans succeeded in their colonization efforts because they were more technologically advanced than anyone they were colonizing. It is not a case of twin brothers. It is the case of an older brother stealing from his baby brother.
- pjc50 7y ago"Guns, Germs, and Steel" has a go at explaining this. The role of germs should not be underestimated; the pandemics the colonizers brought and spread (in some cases deliberately) killed far more than the guns. Thus offering the illusion that there was empty space for the taking.
- fastball 7y agoBut the reason that Europe had germs is because Europe had dense cities for far longer than the places they were colonizing.