Not likely, there was a lot of British economical development generated by the empire.
I went to college with Dinesh and he was a egotistical windbag back then as well. He takes policy positions based on how much it will ingratiate himself to the hard right, regardless of the logic or implications. He’s reasonably intelligent, so it’s more the shame that he has no interest in making a coherent, supported case.
As I said, I don’t think the anti-colonialists have made their case. But D’Souza’s objection is inexplicable. He’s questioning their theory by throwing evidence that supports it in their face.
It would be like somebody claiming that Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback in the NFL. And D’Souza said, “Oh yeah? Well, if Brady is so great, explain why he won his division nine times.”
The West was already the wealthiest part of the world by the time the industrial revolution got started. Granted, the industrial revolution kicked their wealth advantage to an even higher level.
Why should anyone try and defend your strawman argument?
Correct. The gap between the West and the rest widened greatly after the industrial revolution.
For example, in 1700 the average Briton was about twice as rich as the average Chinese. By 1913 the average Briton was 9 times as rich as the average Chinese.
By the 1840s and 1850s a formal empire was unnecessary. The costs of maintaining and defending the empire exceeded any economic benefits. Most British trade and investment was done with independent countries. Given stable political conditions in particular overseas markets, Britain could prosper through free trade alone without having to resort to formal rule.
Timelines can get you anything as long as you ignore the big picture. A lot of what you report was made possible thanks to the development of the empire before that.
1700 was actually pretty late in the colonial period. The East India Company, for example, celebrated its 100th anniversary in that year. And England was a late-comer in European colonialism. Spain, Portugal, and France all had overseas colonies before England.
it’s a popular notion, but not one supported by facts,. Spain was arguably already the world’s greatest military power in 1492 . It had a powerful navy, but an even more powerful army. Aragon alone had defeated France and taken over half of Italy, and united with Leon-Castille into Spain, was effectively the greatest power in Europe.
However, Spain had a significant problem in the economic realm. Spain never had a huge agricultural base - a lot of what are traditional Spanish foods are so bcaue they would grow in the touch, rocky soils of Spain. This hidnered economic growth and it was never exactly an industrial powerhouse. It had some major trade ports, but its position looks more useful than it actually is. It doesn’t have a superabundance of navigable rivers, either.
End story is that Spain was riding high and managed to build that position into considerable power.
Yes and no. Spain bought a lot… and then what? Gold *destroyed *their economy. There was no such floating around that many professions became unprofitable. Inflation ravaged the country, hindering its devlopment until it was probably the most backward European country.
And at the end of the day, them people who benefited weren’t “The Spanish”, but a small section of spanish elite.
No, it doesn’t. The answer to that question is very well-known, and not in the least controversial. The answer is science and technology.
Yes, surprisingly, it was the rest of Europe that really benefited from the flow of American gold and silver into Spain. (Although the transportation of gold and silver across the oceans to Spain makes D’Souza look kind of clueless for denouncing the idea that there was an element of “conquering other countries and taking their stuff” - that’s literally what Spain did.) But Spain got the gold and silver cheaply - all they had to do was make the Indians hand it over. The rest of Europe had to earn that gold and silver. They had to sell things to Spain like crops and livestock and manufactured goods and luxury items. Which meant they had to develop their economies to produce this stuff while all Spain had to do was spend money.
The long term result was that the other countries ended up with the gold and silver which Spain used to buy things from them - and they ended up with stronger economies than Spain had. So those other countries in Europe ended up becoming richer than Spain.
Also, because they got something far more precious than gold:
Potatoes.
[quote=“smiling_bandit, post:15, topic:634155”]
I guess I don’t understand [smiling bandit’s] assertion at all. What is “wealth” if it is not a) stuff that can be taken, and b) the organized structure of society that produces that stuff (education, industry, live workers, etc.), which is always damaged and often entirely destroyed by the process of “taking.”
Particularly your assertion that “when the colonies were abandoned, the locals would find themselves far richer,” makes no sense: after their wealth-producing society had been destroyed, most of their labor force killed, their capital expropriated and their non-renewable natural resources stripped, they’d find themselves far richer? In what sense, moral capital?
The above is a slightly misleading statistic however. Even going by Maddison’s numbers ( and there other studies that put China roughly even with France and Britain in terms of per capita wealth throughout the 18th century, which a rather a tough figure to calculate ) China’s per capita GDP was still the same as Russia’s in 1700 and the total Chinese GDP exceeded that of all of Europe combined as late as 1820 ( when the balance of trade began to reverse sharply due to the mass importation of opium among other factors ).
Which of course just throws the disparity in later decades into even sharper relief. Until the early 19th century China was in some respects a more powerful economic engine than all of Europe. It’s decline thereafter is dizzying. As Angus Maddison and other like-minded scholars have noted, China’s current climb back into economic relevance is just returning it to the stage it dominated for most of world history anyway.
Just by the by and as a extra-bonus tidbit of annoying pedantry, it was silver that was the primary source of Spanish mineral wealth in the New World. Both in the first boom ( Taxco in Zacatecas and Potosi in Peru in the 16th century ) and the second ( Zacatecas again in the 18th century ). Gold was far more important for Portugal that went through a Brazilian gold boom that made John V of Portugal ( r. 1706-1750 ) Europe’s wealthiest monarch in terms of liquid cash.
You miss his point completely. If in 100 years Mexico has conquered the US and taken all our oil and someone asks how Mexico got stronger than the US the answer will not be by conquering us and taking our oil.
In the middle ages Europe was almost conquered by Muslims. European attempts to invade lands Muslims had conquered all ultimately failed. China was the most advanced, richest country in the world for most of the last thousand years. Then suddenly something happened that made Europe the most advanced civilization on Earth and they were able to conquer or colonize most of the rest of the world.
What D’Souza is calling anti-colonialism is not the idea that it is bad to have colonies, which is universally acknowledged and is why no one has colonies anymore, but a variation of Marxist thought popular in poor countries. This held that poor countries were the proletariat of the world and the only reason they were poor was because they were being rich countries were exploiting them. Apparently, D’Souza makes much of the communist beliefs of Barak Obama Sr., who was one of a generation of educated third worlders who believed that once poor nations got rid of their colonizers they would become rich. However, this was totally wrong and once nations got rid of their colonizers they mostly became poorer. This was because the actual way to become rich in a modern society is not to monopolize resources the way it had been in the 16th century but to build wealth producing institutions and knowledge.
I’m interested to hear about this, because whenever I hear D’Souza speaking, I get the impression that I’m getting a Grima Wormtongue treatment, because he keeps linking one assertion to another to lead you to a conclusion, but if you examine each individual link in the chain, it all turns out to be ephemeral.
My point is that it’s not sufficient for D’Souza to just declare an idea is wrong. He’s got to provide some evidence to support his declaration.
The anti-colonialist argument is that European powers grew rich by transporting wealth from their colonies back to their homeland.
Two historical patterns have been presented: That European countries grew richer in comparison to non-European powers during the same period when those European had colonies. And former colonies were generally poor after Europe withdrew its control over them.
Looking at these two patterns, there’s nothing in them to contradict the anti-colonialist argument. In fact, they seem to support it. If the anti-colonialist argument was correct, these would be the patterns you’d expect to see. This evidence doesn’t prove the anti-colonialist argument - it could just be an unrelated coincidence - but it certainly doesn’t disprove the argument.
However, they must have been richer than the colonies to begin with or how would they have been able to colonize a richer country? Furthermore, since decolonization the colonies have not gotten richer and Europe has not gotten poorer. Also the European countries with the biggest colonial holdings are not richer than the ones with smaller colonial holdings. The anti-colonialist argument only make sense if you do not think about it too long.
Why should any of these statements be true?
What does “rich” mean?
What does “bigger” mean?