Where did the British get a lot of raw materials for their industrialization. Where did they dump a lot of their products ?

Doesn't this line of reasoning apply equally to the Swiss? They had no colonies, and are richer than Britain today. Probably were in 1952 as well.

Actually by 1952, probably not. Switzerland's economy was pretty much agricultural up to the second world war (remittence payments from the Vatican were a noticeable source of foreign income into the early 20th century!).

WWII offered a source of capital (people stashing their money into a neutral state, and many never asking for it back) and some industrialization, but the Switzerland we think of today is really a product of the late 50s/1960s.

Most places were pretty agricultural in 1952 :) This dataset has Switzerland at #2 in 1950, and a comment says UK would have been #7.

Economic growth in europe only really took off to levels we think of as "today" after 30+ years of intense postwar growth. It was rich before that, but still very rural. Movies of the era are quite revealing.

I an genuinely curious if there is an argument against Switzerland et al being counterexamples to the colonialism/wealth argument. The strongest one I can think of would be that Switzerland et al benefitted from proximity to capital and to the new techniques discovered by capital.

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/GDP-...

Indeed. But German industrialisation didn't seem to need much from tropical colonies.

And conversely, all those fabulous silver mines didn't exactly leave the Spaniards with a head-start in modernisation.