Comment by myrmidon

> And then think a little how amassing enough silver by slavery to make a 60feet high altar 300 years ago didn't give you quite a nice headstart on dominating a world where most other competing cultures valued the same metals as currency.

This is where we disagree. My position is that colonialism was a consequence of post-medieval Europe being dominant, instead of the other way around.

I'm not disputing that colonialism profitted the perpetrators, but I think giving it major credit for 20th-century Europes wealth is just a misattribution (if I had to reduce that to one word it would be "industrialization" and not "colonialism", very clearly).

Early ~1900 power dynamics are another strong indicator-- even at the height of colonialism, the nations engaging very heavily in it (British, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch) struggled to keep up with Germany which did not get significant benefit from it at all.

I would also argue that the biggest value of colonies was less in the raw extraction of ressources, but instead in the trade/arbitration (and additional markets) that they enabled (i.e. the big value-add was not so much stealing the silver out of the ground in Argentinia, but instead the act of getting/selling it to China).