7 ms·

Which empires were not built on plunder?

by readthenotes1 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 3y ago
The US, for one.
- MeImCounting 3y ago
  Well, about that.... The US was certainly built on plunder, perhaps not of the shiny metals kind but plunder nonetheless.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > The US was certainly built on plunder Selling iron ore and other raw material to other countries? I don't think so. Don't neglect all the goods and services created by an industrial economy. You can't dig a house out of the ground, nor shoes, nor canned goods, nor glass bottles, nor choo choo trains, nor airplanes, nor textiles, etc. Japan and Hong Kong both proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that great wealth does not come from plunder, it comes from creating things.
    - MeImCounting 3y ago
      I think maybe youre missing your own point here? The US got rich from primarily three sources: First it was agriculture specifically tobacco and sugar both of which are cultivars I believe qualify as plunder. Next it was oil, which came from from land taken as plunder. This oil was primarily consumed domestically and contributed to the building up of the large industrial manufacturing economy then and later in the 20th century. Then finally yes the US had a large manufacturing economy which lead to the innovation and information economies of the late 20th and 21st centuries. It is clear to me that much of the United States' wealth comes from the plunder of the conquered peoples of the continental US, Caribbean islands and Pacific islands. https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/the-economics-of-cotton/ https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/the-... https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1681/tobacco--colonial-american-economy/ https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1681/tobacco--colonial-... https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrialization-of-the-U-S-economy https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrializa...
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Colonial America was not rich with plunder. They lost every battle with the British (except the last one), and was on the edge of defeat at every turn. This, despite have the home turf advantage, and the British had to ship everything over via sailing ships. The industrialization of America happened after 1800 and took place in the free North, not the tobacco cotton plantations in the slave South. Where were the Indian tobacco and cotton plantations, anyway? Besides, explain why didn't the other American countries get rich from all this plunder, too? Recall all that oil in Mexico and Venezuela? Why has that plunder failed to make Venezuela and Mexico rich? > Then finally yes the US had a large manufacturing economy Why do you think that happened? Did the US plunder machine tools from other countries (like the Soviets did after WW2, though that didn't seem to have helped them much)? > It is clear to me that much of the United States' wealth comes from the plunder of the conquered peoples of the continental US, Again, why aren't Mexico and S. America wealthy? > Caribbean islands and Pacific islands. This is sheer fantasy. A few islands in the Pacific fueled the industrial empire of the US?
        MeImCounting 3y ago
        Im just going to paste my comment from the other thread here in response since I dont want to rephrase everything ive said. Feel free to reply in either place Do you actually not know/want to discuss why that is or are you just pushing your narrative which is that "the particular special brand of White People™ who happened to become dominant in the US were very good and very smart and so invented factories and made the US rich and therefor the riches of the US have nothing to do with plunder but with the virtue of these very good very smart very special White People™"? Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever, it was sent back to Europe. How the oil rush in the US was primarily consumed domestically and enabled a huge buildup of industry or how the US has long had a strong domestic supply of steel those places either lacked key resources such as oil or steel while being rich in others or had their social and political structures destroyed by the legacy of colonialism. This combined with terrible governance shows us pretty clearly why the rest of the Americas didnt become rich like the US. https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development- https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-... https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph... https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The...
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  The native Americans might disagree slightly on that one. Perhaps the transatlantic slave trade might also be considered plunder?
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > The native Americans might disagree slightly on that one. The evidence in the bones of pre-Columbian Indians is that the suffered periodic famines. > Perhaps the transatlantic slave trade might also be considered plunder? It could be. But it's also true that whatever wealth the slaves created was burned to the ground in the Civil War. The industrialized free Northern states' economy buried the economy of the slave South. There's also the wealth of the rest of N and S American countries, which did not become wealthy.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > But it’s also true that whatever wealth the slaves created was burned to the ground in the Civil War. No, its not. For one thing, the states that joined the Confederacy weren’t the only states in which wealth was built by slaves. They were most of the states that were still slave states at the time, but many more states had been slave states, and some still were and stayed in the Union. For another thing, while war was destructive, not all the wealth built on slavery in the Confederacy was destroyed in the Civil War.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Slavery died out in the Northern states around 1800. The industrialization in the North came after that. > not all the wealth built on slavery in the Confederacy was destroyed in the Civil War What wasn't was a rounding error. Of course, the slave states didn't have much in the way of industry to be destroyed in the first place. The plantations were burned down by Sherman. The slave South couldn't even make shoes. The reason Lee was at Gettysburg was he was headed for nearby Harrisburg to loot the shoe factory there. Rebel soldiers were largely barefoot. History shows that free people outproduce slaves by a wide margin. Running an industrial slave economy has been tried a few times, with dismal results.
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  Yes, they just were lucky enough to find some fertile and totally uninhabited land .
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Did they find factories, along with skilled labor to run them, too?
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      Well there was a 200-250 year gap before they built those factories. Per capita Americans were already significantly better of than average Europeans mainly because of much higher availability of land. It’s hard to imagine enough capital and raw resources would have been available for industrialization without that.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Land does not have a history of making a country wealthy. After all, all countries have land.
        Wytwwww 3y ago
        > After all, all countries have land. It certainly does in preindustrial societes. If we look at Europe before the industrialization there is a very direct relationship between the amount of fertile land per capita and wealth/income per capita (Malthusian trap). In the 1600s and 1700s North Eastern US was probably the best place the world to live if we look at average QoL (.e.g. life expectancy alone was 10-20 years higher than back in England) and Americans were already very wealthy compared to average Europeans long before industrialization started mainly because of high abundance of land relative to population. Which resulted in extremely high natural population growth.
- darby_eight 3y ago
  ??? american natural resources alone funded centuries of economic growth.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    The growth came from American industry.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Why weren't the Indians wealthy? Or Central America, or South America?
      - hospadar 3y ago
        Weren't they? Europeans certainly placed a high value on the land and resources controlled by native americans and went to extreme lengths (i.e. genocide and mass displacement) to get their hands on it. If that's not plunder I don't know what is.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Why didn't the other American nations get wealthy? Central America, South America, the Caribbean, etc.?
        MeImCounting 3y ago
        Do you actually not know/want to discuss why that is or are you just pushing your narrative which is that "the particular special brand of White People™ who happened to become dominant in the US were very good and very smart and so invented factories and made the US rich and therefor the riches of the US have nothing to do with plunder but with the virtue of these very good very smart very special White People™"? Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever, it was sent back to Europe. How the oil rush in the US was primarily consumed domestically and enabled a huge buildup of industry or how the US has long had a strong domestic supply of steel those places either lacked key resources such as oil or steel while being rich in others or had their social and political structures destroyed by the legacy of colonialism. This combined with terrible governance shows us pretty clearly why the rest of the Americas didnt become rich like the US. https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-latin-america/ https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-... https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeography/chapter/latin-america-and-the-caribbean-lacar-economic-geography-i/ https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph... https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The-Colonial-Heritage-of-Latin-America-Essays-on https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The...
- INTPenis 3y ago
  You're kidding right? I mean let's ignore the plunder of a fully inhabited continent since it was done long before the US existed. And of course let's ignore Hawaii. Who owns the Panama canal? It's not even on US soil. Who owns a huge chunk of Cuba? Guam, Puerto Rico, Philippines? And let's not forget my favorite piece of American history/plunder, the black hills of Dakota. Study your history.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Who owns the Panama canal? The Government of Panama. > It’s not even on US soil. Well, no, its on Panamanian soil. > Study your history. Take your own advice. Particular dates of interest you might want to focus on are 7 September 1977 and 31 December 1999, when it comes to the Panama Canal.
    - INTPenis 3y ago
      Yes, they did hand it back in 1977. How big of them.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        The US funded the construction of the Panama Canal, along with providing the heavy equipment to do it.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        As well as funding the revolt that created Panama out of part of Colombia in the first place, for the purpose of building the canal. The history is definitely one of imperialism, but the claim that it was currently American was 25 years out of date.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Remember the US was formed out of a revolt, too. Revolutions are not always bad.
- diydsp 3y ago
  Try searching for the word "gold" in this document... https://amauta.info/files/columbus%20journal2.pdf https://amauta.info/files/columbus%20journal2.pdf
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Columbus predated the US by 300 years.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Which empires were not built on plunder?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

WalterBright 3y ago

The US, for one.

MeImCounting 3y ago
Well, about that.... The US was certainly built on plunder, perhaps not of the shiny metals kind but plunder nonetheless.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > The US was certainly built on plunder Selling iron ore and other raw material to other countries? I don't think so. Don't neglect all the goods and services created by an industrial economy. You can't dig a house out of the ground, nor shoes, nor canned goods, nor glass bottles, nor choo choo trains, nor airplanes, nor textiles, etc. Japan and Hong Kong both proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that great wealth does not come from plunder, it comes from creating things.
  - MeImCounting 3y ago
    I think maybe youre missing your own point here? The US got rich from primarily three sources: First it was agriculture specifically tobacco and sugar both of which are cultivars I believe qualify as plunder. Next it was oil, which came from from land taken as plunder. This oil was primarily consumed domestically and contributed to the building up of the large industrial manufacturing economy then and later in the 20th century. Then finally yes the US had a large manufacturing economy which lead to the innovation and information economies of the late 20th and 21st centuries. It is clear to me that much of the United States' wealth comes from the plunder of the conquered peoples of the continental US, Caribbean islands and Pacific islands. https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/the-economics-of-cotton/ https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/the-... https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1681/tobacco--colonial-american-economy/ https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1681/tobacco--colonial-... https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrialization-of-the-U-S-economy https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrializa...
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Colonial America was not rich with plunder. They lost every battle with the British (except the last one), and was on the edge of defeat at every turn. This, despite have the home turf advantage, and the British had to ship everything over via sailing ships. The industrialization of America happened after 1800 and took place in the free North, not the tobacco cotton plantations in the slave South. Where were the Indian tobacco and cotton plantations, anyway? Besides, explain why didn't the other American countries get rich from all this plunder, too? Recall all that oil in Mexico and Venezuela? Why has that plunder failed to make Venezuela and Mexico rich? > Then finally yes the US had a large manufacturing economy Why do you think that happened? Did the US plunder machine tools from other countries (like the Soviets did after WW2, though that didn't seem to have helped them much)? > It is clear to me that much of the United States' wealth comes from the plunder of the conquered peoples of the continental US, Again, why aren't Mexico and S. America wealthy? > Caribbean islands and Pacific islands. This is sheer fantasy. A few islands in the Pacific fueled the industrial empire of the US?
      - MeImCounting 3y ago
        Im just going to paste my comment from the other thread here in response since I dont want to rephrase everything ive said. Feel free to reply in either place Do you actually not know/want to discuss why that is or are you just pushing your narrative which is that "the particular special brand of White People™ who happened to become dominant in the US were very good and very smart and so invented factories and made the US rich and therefor the riches of the US have nothing to do with plunder but with the virtue of these very good very smart very special White People™"? Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever, it was sent back to Europe. How the oil rush in the US was primarily consumed domestically and enabled a huge buildup of industry or how the US has long had a strong domestic supply of steel those places either lacked key resources such as oil or steel while being rich in others or had their social and political structures destroyed by the legacy of colonialism. This combined with terrible governance shows us pretty clearly why the rest of the Americas didnt become rich like the US. https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development- https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-... https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph... https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The...
olddustytrail 3y ago
The native Americans might disagree slightly on that one. Perhaps the transatlantic slave trade might also be considered plunder?
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > The native Americans might disagree slightly on that one. The evidence in the bones of pre-Columbian Indians is that the suffered periodic famines. > Perhaps the transatlantic slave trade might also be considered plunder? It could be. But it's also true that whatever wealth the slaves created was burned to the ground in the Civil War. The industrialized free Northern states' economy buried the economy of the slave South. There's also the wealth of the rest of N and S American countries, which did not become wealthy.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > But it’s also true that whatever wealth the slaves created was burned to the ground in the Civil War. No, its not. For one thing, the states that joined the Confederacy weren’t the only states in which wealth was built by slaves. They were most of the states that were still slave states at the time, but many more states had been slave states, and some still were and stayed in the Union. For another thing, while war was destructive, not all the wealth built on slavery in the Confederacy was destroyed in the Civil War.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Slavery died out in the Northern states around 1800. The industrialization in the North came after that. > not all the wealth built on slavery in the Confederacy was destroyed in the Civil War What wasn't was a rounding error. Of course, the slave states didn't have much in the way of industry to be destroyed in the first place. The plantations were burned down by Sherman. The slave South couldn't even make shoes. The reason Lee was at Gettysburg was he was headed for nearby Harrisburg to loot the shoe factory there. Rebel soldiers were largely barefoot. History shows that free people outproduce slaves by a wide margin. Running an industrial slave economy has been tried a few times, with dismal results.
Wytwwww 3y ago
Yes, they just were lucky enough to find some fertile and totally uninhabited land .
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Did they find factories, along with skilled labor to run them, too?
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    Well there was a 200-250 year gap before they built those factories. Per capita Americans were already significantly better of than average Europeans mainly because of much higher availability of land. It’s hard to imagine enough capital and raw resources would have been available for industrialization without that.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Land does not have a history of making a country wealthy. After all, all countries have land.
      - Wytwwww 3y ago
        > After all, all countries have land. It certainly does in preindustrial societes. If we look at Europe before the industrialization there is a very direct relationship between the amount of fertile land per capita and wealth/income per capita (Malthusian trap). In the 1600s and 1700s North Eastern US was probably the best place the world to live if we look at average QoL (.e.g. life expectancy alone was 10-20 years higher than back in England) and Americans were already very wealthy compared to average Europeans long before industrialization started mainly because of high abundance of land relative to population. Which resulted in extremely high natural population growth.
darby_eight 3y ago
??? american natural resources alone funded centuries of economic growth.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  The growth came from American industry.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Why weren't the Indians wealthy? Or Central America, or South America?
    - hospadar 3y ago
      Weren't they? Europeans certainly placed a high value on the land and resources controlled by native americans and went to extreme lengths (i.e. genocide and mass displacement) to get their hands on it. If that's not plunder I don't know what is.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Why didn't the other American nations get wealthy? Central America, South America, the Caribbean, etc.?
        MeImCounting 3y ago
        Do you actually not know/want to discuss why that is or are you just pushing your narrative which is that "the particular special brand of White People™ who happened to become dominant in the US were very good and very smart and so invented factories and made the US rich and therefor the riches of the US have nothing to do with plunder but with the virtue of these very good very smart very special White People™"? Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever, it was sent back to Europe. How the oil rush in the US was primarily consumed domestically and enabled a huge buildup of industry or how the US has long had a strong domestic supply of steel those places either lacked key resources such as oil or steel while being rich in others or had their social and political structures destroyed by the legacy of colonialism. This combined with terrible governance shows us pretty clearly why the rest of the Americas didnt become rich like the US. https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-latin-america/ https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-... https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeography/chapter/latin-america-and-the-caribbean-lacar-economic-geography-i/ https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph... https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The-Colonial-Heritage-of-Latin-America-Essays-on https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The...
INTPenis 3y ago
You're kidding right? I mean let's ignore the plunder of a fully inhabited continent since it was done long before the US existed. And of course let's ignore Hawaii. Who owns the Panama canal? It's not even on US soil. Who owns a huge chunk of Cuba? Guam, Puerto Rico, Philippines? And let's not forget my favorite piece of American history/plunder, the black hills of Dakota. Study your history.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Who owns the Panama canal? The Government of Panama. > It’s not even on US soil. Well, no, its on Panamanian soil. > Study your history. Take your own advice. Particular dates of interest you might want to focus on are 7 September 1977 and 31 December 1999, when it comes to the Panama Canal.
  - INTPenis 3y ago
    Yes, they did hand it back in 1977. How big of them.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      The US funded the construction of the Panama Canal, along with providing the heavy equipment to do it.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        As well as funding the revolt that created Panama out of part of Colombia in the first place, for the purpose of building the canal. The history is definitely one of imperialism, but the claim that it was currently American was 25 years out of date.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Remember the US was formed out of a revolt, too. Revolutions are not always bad.
diydsp 3y ago
Try searching for the word "gold" in this document... https://amauta.info/files/columbus%20journal2.pdf https://amauta.info/files/columbus%20journal2.pdf
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Columbus predated the US by 300 years.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]