Europe was able to colonize because it was already rich and technologically advanced. By 1700, more than 50 years before the British East India company came to control India, the UK had more than double the per capita GDP of India, and the Netherlands had more than quadrupled the per capita GDP of India.

Note of course that India was already a colony at the time. The origin of Arabs is 8,000 miles away from where I was born, but I have an Arabic last name. Guess how that happened.

Is it fair to compare the very small region that is England to the very large region that is India?

A fairer comparison would be Europe vs India at the time, or England vs the most advanced region of India at the time.

"The most advanced region of Europe" vs "the average region of India" is nitpicking.

Colonization requires advanced fleets, weaponry, and economy. Colonization is a result of Europe's explosive economic growth, not a cause.

The clickbait title is poorly worded. The actual title should be "How Europe became the most scientifically advanced part of the world" as that's what's discussed.

The weaponry and fleets were advanced. But Europe was still not wealthier or more advanced than the Middle East, or East Asia as a culture.

What does 'advanced' mean in this context?

France mostly lost money with colonisation. Sure, there were some people getting rich from it. This is was more for the prestige than money. I can't say the same for the UK, not having read much on the economic of colonisation for them.

How much money did France lose from its colony in Haiti?

Oh right - Haiti was forced to pay for all the property France last.

Including paying the former slave-masters whose slaves had been freed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy

I trust you aren't including that payment as part the money actually lost to France.

Did France ever pay back the damages they did to Guinea before leaving?

> In Guinea, for example, the French destroyed everything they could not take back to their country. They burned food, killed cows, and destroyed buildings and books. These outrageous actions were all because Guinea wanted independence. - https://afritechnews.com/french-colonial-tax/

> In response to the vote for independence, the French settlers in Guinea were quite dramatic in severing ties with Guinea. The Washington Post observed how brutal the French were in tearing down all that they thought were their contributions to Guinea: "In reaction, and as a warning to other French-speaking territories, the French pulled out of Guinea over a two-month period, taking everything they could with them. They unscrewed lightbulbs, removed plans for sewage pipelines in Conakry, the capital, and even burned medicines rather than leave them for the Guineans." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea#Independence_(1958)

How are those counted for in your bookkeeping?

Several African countries are still paying for the infrastructure France built during colonization - infrastructure that of course was forced on them. And France forced its ex-colonies to give France economic advantages that persis, like "France has the first right to purchase any natural resources discovered." and "French companies have dibs on all government procurement bids" - https://afritechnews.com/french-colonial-tax/ .

Are you tracking those on your balance sheet?

Finally, how much money did France lose in French Indochina, a colonie d'exploitation économique, and where did it go?

What people don't get is at the time, the state power mattered more than companies, territorial expansion and reach was one of the prime goal.

British and Dutch colonialism were public-private joint affairs. The VOC was the first company to raise capital by selling stocks. Jamestown (first permanent English settlement in the Americas) was settled by the London Company, under Crown charter.

Compare that to the Spanish colonialism, where state power indeed mattered more than companies.

Yeah that's kind of the big difference I'd say between British and Dutch colonialism and French and Spanish colonialism. On the French empire, the state had almost all the power and territorial expansion was on everybody's mind.

Not that makes it better but it's essential to bring it back in the context.

Any sources?

If you can read french

https://www.google.com/amp/s/lexpansion.lexpress.fr/actualit...

Otherwise google do agood job with french translation

Which means the author has managed to look past the most superficial and simplistic answers and current political fads.

I don't think the answer is nearly as simple as "Because Colonialism!", but if it is not discussed at all, then you have to wonder if they don't have the exact same issue you are claiming they are avoiding, but only from the opposite side.

Europe is not the only continent to have been extremely wealthy, and to claim that they did not extract significant wealth from other countries via outright force as well as projection of power, then you are performing quite a lot of revisions on history.

You'll note that I am not claiming that Europe is the only culture to practice colonialism or that they are uniquely evil for doing so - war has been a universal constant in humanity no matter the geographic region. I don't think Europe is more immoral for doing it other countries than anyone doing the same to those in their own country. China has a long history of wars of secession and unification, and I doubt the fact that the people that started the wars were of what we would today call the same nationality was any comfort to those that had their lives ruined or family members killed.

But to ignore the fact that massive quantities of wealth were extracted by European colonialism is absurd. The Dutch East India Company would be worth nearly 8 trillion USD at today's rates. The British East India Company is a bit harder to figure accurately, due to how intertwined it was with the Crown, as well as how much of the earnings left the company nearly immediately for private coffers, and the outrageous level of expenditures during it's period of de facto government in British India. But it made up half of the world's trade for a period - and made quite a lot of Europeans very very rich. If this trade was fair, and not an extraction of wealth, you would have seen this create similar levels of benefits to both parties - but this is plainly not the case.

You simply can't ignore this when trying to answer the question the article claims to be tackling. It's not the sole answer - and there are certainly a multitude of questions around how it came to be that European countries were so brutally "effective" at colonizing - but even if you have decided you want to write an article that focuses on the other factors, it's the sort of thing you really should disclaim and provide at least a basic background on.

Not doing so provides a very flawed picture of the situation, regardless of whether it was done with the intent to create said picture.

> If this trade was fair, and not an extraction of wealth, you would have seen this create similar levels of benefits to both parties

No, the majority of the wealth would go to the party that did the work behind the trade, ie those who ran the ships to go around the world. They could buy goods in India for local Indian prices, and then sell in Europe for European prices, that is where the money lies. Not sure how you can argue that it isn't fair to buy goods for their local market value value.

India could have done the same, realized the trade is worth more than the production of the goods and made their own ships and went around the world making much more profits, but they didn't.

The fleets they were able to build in large quantities due to the places they had colonized providing long pine, cotton, and other materials they did not have at home?

"Local market value" - you mean under market value, because they were pressured or outright forced to by their colonizers?

Bengal was one of the richest places in the world, with community owned and driven cotton farming providing wealth for a huge chunk of the population. Then, this "fair trade" with Britain somehow reduced them to poverty and starvation.

Basically everywhere that Europeans colonized that already had wealth, commercial production, etc., saw all that wealth extracted from them, their standards of living drop precipitously, and just general widespread exploitation. Places they colonized that had raw materials, but did not have the same level of wealth or production of goods (Generally because environmental factors, such as lack of navigable waterways or large quantities of arable land, etc.) might have seen this pick up and gained glimpses of new technologies, but again were exploited by the Europeans to extract this wealth from them, and again at rates that would have been well below what would have been natural levels of value if they were to produce and trade things under different circumstances.

The reality of the situation is that colonization is exploitative and has a track record of being universally a Bad Thing for the people being colonized. Over history colonization and conquering is hardly a uniquely European thing, but Europe was ascendant in what ended up being a window of opportunity, with the acceleration of scientific and technological progress allowing them colonize more disparate locations, capitalize on this trade, and ultimately create what is the modern world order. This isn't the first time that that story has played out, however, and I doubt it will be the last.

> The fleets they were able to build in large quantities due to the places they had colonized providing long pine, cotton, and other materials they did not have at home?

> "Local market value" - you mean under market value, because they were pressured or outright forced to by their colonizers?

There were centuries of peaceful trade between Bengal and Europe before the invasion and exploitation you talk about happened. During this time Bengal/India could have made their own ships and gotten the same wealth from trade, but they didn't. East Indian companies grew a lot of their value during this period, and ultimately became strong enough that they could outright conquer their trade partners and therefore get the goods for free.

> Basically everywhere that Europeans colonized that already had wealth, commercial production, etc., saw all that wealth extracted from them

I never denied that colonization was bad for the people in those areas. I just denied that the trade that happened was bad for the region or that it was unfair. When the European powers conquered the area and became rulers it was bad, but that means the conquest was bad not that the trade was bad. Before the conquest Bengal had benefited from the trade with European powers.

But also not talking about colonialism at all is a red flag.

No small feat - first, to have the intellect to do so, and second the courage.

That's a big oversight. I guess the best way to understand why Europe is rich is to know the history of the Dutch East India company and their tactics in securing their wealth.

I think biology played a bigger part than just colonization itself. Europe went to the Americas and brought back potatos and a substantial boost in calorie production compared to wheat. Alongside corn, tomatoes, sweet potato. The Americas got smallpox, chickenpox, malaria, typhoid, and a host of other diseases. Europe was much better placed to benefit from this exchange of organisms because of better disease resistance. Northern European farms could grow potato and free up labour to work in factories.

> The Indian subcontinent and the Middle East were fragmented for much of their history, and Africa even more so, yet they did not experience a Great Enrichment.

They had an opportunity to explain why the colonised lands didn’t experience a “Great Enrichment”, but they chose to completely ignore most of history.

Europe was a backwater of global affairs for millennia, with essentially all wealth moving through different steps further east to China. Then advances in weaponry and shipbuilding enabled it to subject others and extract vast amounts of wealth for ca 150 years (colonialism/imperialism/slavery and mercantilism), which ended about 80-100 years ago. Nothing has managed to fully destroy the advantage since then as technology builds cumulatively, but the traditional superpower china is on the way back up.

Or slavery in the Americas, which was also instituted and implemented by Europeans

Slavery existed since the dawn of civilization. The Egyptians used slave labor as did essentially all other ancient empires. Slavery existed in Africa well before 'Europeans' came along offering a market.

Well, neither Mayans, not Aztecs needed Europeans at all to introduce the concept of slaves in their societies (or help to sacrifice them to their gods).

Explaining differences between "North" and "South" through colonial exploitation is a traditional "coping mechanism" of those with inferiority complex.

The "South" benefited massively from transfers of technology from the North. The North benefited with ....?