You put me in mind of the debt peonage Europeans forced upon indigenous Americans in 1907: > It was the agents and overseers sent into the region who were, muc

You put me in mind of the debt peonage Europeans forced upon indigenous Americans in 1907: > It was the agents and overseers sent into the region who were, much like the conquistadors, deeply indebted—in their case, to the Peruvian company that had commissioned them, which was ultimately receiving its own credit from London financiers. These agents had certainly arrived with every intention of extending that web of credit to include the Indians, but discovering the Huitoto to have no interest in the cloth, machetes, and coins they had brought to trade with them, they’d finally given up and just started rounding Indians up and forcing them to accept loans at gunpoint, then tabulating the amount of rubber they owed. > In reality, then, the Indians had been reduced to slavery; it’s just that, by 1907, no one could openly admit this. A legitimate enterprise had to have some moral basis. – David Graeber "Debt: The First 5,000 Years"