> Remember that atrocities like that happened in many places that did not grow into giant economies. Stealing land and enslaving people may have given a head start, but clearly something else delivered the big gains.

To be fair, there are few if any countries with the scale of stolen/free land and enslaved labor as in US history.

You'd have to look at the European 'colonies' for both. The US of course was the first colony to become independent -- meaning an end to it's profits being extracted for the home country, and instead re-invested locally.

So I'd say there are basically no other countries with close to the scale of profits built from stolen land and enslaved labor, and then not extracted for a colonial home country overseas.