alt Hacker NewsIt can he argued that they only delivered prosperity to European countries by using force and repression elsewhere in the world.
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philipallstar • today at 12:43 PM
It can be, but that would be wrong.
In 1096AD, while the Mayans were plunging daggers into their sacrifices' chests, England was busy opening Oxford University. What sort of fool would think that somehow all the engineering and scientific advance that would allow England to reach around the world and establish an empire could possibly have been caused by that empire?
Many European countries got rich without colonization (e.g the Baltic States before WW2, or Austria-Hungary).
Moreover, economic studies show that the profitability was discutable - in the case of France it was a net loss due to the massive infrastructure costs and the subsidies for non-competitive industries.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3769485