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Which means the author has managed to look past the most superficial and simplistic answers and current political fads.

• commandlinefan 5y ago
  No small feat - first, to have the intellect to do so, and second the courage.
• cthalupa 5y ago
  I don't think the answer is nearly as simple as "Because Colonialism!", but if it is not discussed at all, then you have to wonder if they don't have the exact same issue you are claiming they are avoiding, but only from the opposite side. Europe is not the only continent to have been extremely wealthy, and to claim that they did not extract significant wealth from other countries via outright force as well as projection of power, then you are performing quite a lot of revisions on history. You'll note that I am not claiming that Europe is the only culture to practice colonialism or that they are uniquely evil for doing so - war has been a universal constant in humanity no matter the geographic region. I don't think Europe is more immoral for doing it other countries than anyone doing the same to those in their own country. China has a long history of wars of secession and unification, and I doubt the fact that the people that started the wars were of what we would today call the same nationality was any comfort to those that had their lives ruined or family members killed. But to ignore the fact that massive quantities of wealth were extracted by European colonialism is absurd. The Dutch East India Company would be worth nearly 8 trillion USD at today's rates. The British East India Company is a bit harder to figure accurately, due to how intertwined it was with the Crown, as well as how much of the earnings left the company nearly immediately for private coffers, and the outrageous level of expenditures during it's period of de facto government in British India. But it made up half of the world's trade for a period - and made quite a lot of Europeans very very rich. If this trade was fair, and not an extraction of wealth, you would have seen this create similar levels of benefits to both parties - but this is plainly not the case. You simply can't ignore this when trying to answer the question the article claims to be tackling. It's not the sole answer - and there are certainly a multitude of questions around how it came to be that European countries were so brutally "effective" at colonizing - but even if you have decided you want to write an article that focuses on the other factors, it's the sort of thing you really should disclaim and provide at least a basic background on. Not doing so provides a very flawed picture of the situation, regardless of whether it was done with the intent to create said picture.
  • Jensson 5y ago
    > If this trade was fair, and not an extraction of wealth, you would have seen this create similar levels of benefits to both parties No, the majority of the wealth would go to the party that did the work behind the trade, ie those who ran the ships to go around the world. They could buy goods in India for local Indian prices, and then sell in Europe for European prices, that is where the money lies. Not sure how you can argue that it isn't fair to buy goods for their local market value value. India could have done the same, realized the trade is worth more than the production of the goods and made their own ships and went around the world making much more profits, but they didn't.
    • cthalupa 5y ago
      The fleets they were able to build in large quantities due to the places they had colonized providing long pine, cotton, and other materials they did not have at home? "Local market value" - you mean under market value, because they were pressured or outright forced to by their colonizers? Bengal was one of the richest places in the world, with community owned and driven cotton farming providing wealth for a huge chunk of the population. Then, this "fair trade" with Britain somehow reduced them to poverty and starvation. Basically everywhere that Europeans colonized that already had wealth, commercial production, etc., saw all that wealth extracted from them, their standards of living drop precipitously, and just general widespread exploitation. Places they colonized that had raw materials, but did not have the same level of wealth or production of goods (Generally because environmental factors, such as lack of navigable waterways or large quantities of arable land, etc.) might have seen this pick up and gained glimpses of new technologies, but again were exploited by the Europeans to extract this wealth from them, and again at rates that would have been well below what would have been natural levels of value if they were to produce and trade things under different circumstances. The reality of the situation is that colonization is exploitative and has a track record of being universally a Bad Thing for the people being colonized. Over history colonization and conquering is hardly a uniquely European thing, but Europe was ascendant in what ended up being a window of opportunity, with the acceleration of scientific and technological progress allowing them colonize more disparate locations, capitalize on this trade, and ultimately create what is the modern world order. This isn't the first time that that story has played out, however, and I doubt it will be the last.