> The funds from Rockefeller (resource extraction), Carnegie (steel), or from English army (plundering) directly contributed to the large endowments of many of

> The funds from Rockefeller (resource extraction), Carnegie (steel), or from English army (plundering) directly contributed to the large endowments of many of the wealthiest research institutes today. Spain, Portugal, Mongolia and Russia should have a lot of them then. And Korea, Switzerland and Germany shouldn't, as none of them were big colonizers. "Endowments" meaning successful very long running investments, most of all requires something to invest in, which is economic development. Harvard doesn't sit on a big pile of gold. > So colonialism, plundering, and resource extraction is unambiguously profitable by increasing absolute wealth (by taking goods) Taking something doesn't increase absolute wealth… However, it may not really be taking it, because we also don't observe that the colonized countries are poorer due to losing resources sometime before 1900. Rather, having a lot of natural resources is usually bad for your development ("resource curse") but some countries like Australia and Norway have avoided it through good institutions.