Which countries are you referring to? First of all borders in Europe were not the way they are right now 150 or 200 years ago.
Second, an example for a tiny country that was exploiting an african nation well into the 20th century is Belgium [1]
It's the next sentence: Germany, Austria.
Belgium indeed went on a bit of an exploitation spree. But it's never been notably wealthier than its neighbours. (Of course the king got some nice palaces, but that's not country-level wealth.) Instead the industrial part of Belgium was wealthy in the same era that the nearby industrial part parts of France were (and Detroit was). Now that's rust-belt poor, and the wealthy bits are tracking Holland. These patterns seem hard to explain by referring to the (very real) evils of the congo empire.
- What is now Belgium was one of the wealthiest parts of Europe in the Middle Ages, long before any colonization.
- Belgium was the second European country to industrialize. This caused the economy to boom and Belgium had the 4th highest GDP in 1900. Congo was only a colony since 1908.
- In 1918 the whole economy was destroyed because of the war. The Germans had plundered the country. Whole factories were dismantled and shipped to Germany.
- In 1945 the economy was once again destroyed because of the Germans.
- In 1956, at the heigh of colonial exploitation, Congo was 3,3 % of Belgian GDP and 75000 direct and indirect jobs. Not nothing but hardly the base of all wealth. It was much lower in the preceding decades.
- Congo became independent in 1960. Annual GDP growth rates were much higher during the 60's than during the whole colonial period.
I would say Belgium is currently wealthy because of the Marshall plan.
source: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/twent...
I believe exploitation is simply a not so useful label. Trade agreements, even those that appear lopsided, are in my opinion not morally wrong. The moral issues arise from accompanying violence, corruption and theft.
The developing countries who arguably have been "exploited" could not have developed even to their current state on their own. At least not within centuries.
The oil-rich countries in the middle east couldn't have used their oil for anything until they got the technology to get it out of the earth and somebody paid them for exporting it.
Same goes for many exports of African countries.
Sure thing, the "first world" has done a lot of wrong to the "third world". But the latter isn't going to get anywhere without help from the former, either.
This assumes that the colonialists countries didn't trade with non colonialist countries in Europe.
Prussia initiated the concept of a common market in 1818 and in 1833 a treaty extended the Zollverein to the larger states of Germany, although Austria, by Prussian design was excluded.
As demand for coal increased, Germany rapidly developed railway and coalfields
We see lots of migration between Europeans countries specially ones with linked borders. There is movement of goods and people which itself can pull multiple of European countries to higher wages levels and living standards.
If french were getting richer and Germans were extracting coal. Germans could sell their coal at much higher price to French and grow rich without getting into colonialism.
If you cross the border and make much higher wages, the news would spread and regions would equalise overtime unless there is something which artificially stops migration.
Here's the data (which confirms high migration rates): https://brewminate.com/internal-migration-in-france-and-germ...
Look at the US and Mexico: Despite having a lot of trade and migration, the two countries significantly differ economically.
So it plainly does not hold that trade and migration entirely eliminates differences.
Brahmins in India had high social status but less money/assets in past. So I am not talking about economic status.
And indeed, Mexico is gaining ground on the US, not least because of bilateral trade and bilateral migration.
Back then labor was in more demand. Evidence is the salves were imported often at great cost and risk.
There were fewer commodities in market.
Germany had coal, French needed it.
There was no limit on immigration.
People from Germany and France were more equal in education and social status than the difference you've between Americans and Mexicans.
Technology wise countries in Europe were quite equal, what differed is the amount of resources at their disposal.
>So it plainly does not hold that trade and migration entirely eliminates differences.
It doesn't have to entirely eliminate differences, just have to make them more equal.
> People from Germany and France were more equal in education and social status than the difference you've between Americans and Mexicans.
Good way to disqualify any counter-examples to your theory. If they're more equal in status (i.e. have more equal economies), then they don't count.
If colonialism was necessary for industrialisation the European powers with no or smaller colonial empires would have had lower growth. Germany would have been behind the U.K. and France. Austria would have been obviously suffering compared to Germany. This didn’t happen. The evidence is ambiguous as to whether Empire had any effect on economic growth and what it had certainly wasn’t large. You can not detect decolonisation’s effect on historical GDP by eye. That’s how significant colonialism was to economic growth in the developed world.
If actually being the government and in charge of other countries, being able to loot them more or less at will, and being able to direct their populations’ labour and economic development did basically nothing why would trade immiserate Asia and Africa?
More to the point, literally every decade since WWII has been the best ever, on every continent, since WWII. Lifespan, healthy lifespan, education and literacy go up on every continent. Every continent but Africa sees growth in GDP per capita and they look like they’re joining that trend now too.
As far as Foxconn goes they have a lower suicide rate than the general Chinese population.
> ABC News and The Economist both have done some simple comparison— although the number of workplace suicides at Foxconn is large in absolute terms, the suicide rate is actually lower when compared to the overall suicide rate of China or the United States. According to a 2011 Centre for Disease Control and Prevention report, the country has a high suicide rate with approximately 22.23 deaths per 100,000 persons. In 2010, the worst year for workplace suicides at Foxconn with a total of 14 deaths, its employee count was a reported 930,000 people. The total number of Foxconn employee suicides in 2010 is unknown.