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To clarify, I am talking about the European type of colonialism (overseas extraction, settlement and economic exploitation)

Let’s not talk about how we prevent European colonialism from happening, this is just a question.

As I understand it, the Industrial Revolution was the single defining event in history which changed everything on how we live, and the average standard of living skyrocketed after this.



While most rich, developed countries today are European countries (Denmark, Switzerland etc) or European-descended/founded countries (USA, Canada etc) there also are non-European countries* that are rich (South Korea, Singapore etc) or are going to become. (China).

We can see that one of the causes of the Industrial Revolution was colonialism, as raw materials from Asia and Africa were funnelled to Europe, to be manufactured and sold back, therefore creating the need for cheap and productive labor. This is one benefit of colonialism. But I am not denying that it couldn’t happen without colonialism since one civilization before, Song China was already close to starting an Industrial Revolution.

But of course, due to colonialism there are also many countries that have suffered (majority of the world) such as India, it’s native industries destroyed and prevention of industrialisation hampering its economic prosperity or the many African countries today which borders were drawn by European powers and caused many ethnic conflicts that are still continuing today.


So would a world without European colonialism be richer than one with by the year of 2000 A.D? What are your opinions?

Standard of living = low crime rate, high literacy, high economic prosperity etc

I’m not including political representation, free speech, government ideology as those are social concepts. But feel free to include them if you wish.

*I’m gonna exclude Japan here since they did partake in colonialism and benefited from it (although its real economic growth did start after WW2, when the US rebuilt Japan as a bulwark against communism in Asia.)
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