New research on the cost of colonization to India

Re:New research on the cost of colonization to India by gumby on Friday December 14, 2018 @05:13PM (#18685355)

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.

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Re:New research on the cost of colonization to India by graeme on Friday December 14, 2018 @06:08PM (#18685754)

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-...

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Re:New research on the cost of colonization to India by iguy on Friday December 14, 2018 @05:49PM (#18685617)

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.

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