Are you one of those people who think that Europe got rich through slavery and colonization?

[Julie4]

[Babygirl_S]

Definitely! India was the RICHEST country for centuries before the Muslims and British came here. We had visitors from all over the world who wanted to gain knowledge in our universities. Very famous travellers came here for trade. The only thing that made us a colony was a lack of UNITY and of course how broken the Muslims made us after years of oppression. Indian Hindus are the LEAST violent people I can think of. Even the ancient Indian rulers never attacked anyone who didn’t have a weapon. Ashoka stopped expanding his empire after he saw the destruction he had caused and became very spiritual. Could Hitler, Alexander etc. do that? India would be a superpower without the cruel Muslim and British rulers. It wasn’t a poor third world country. All the invaders looted, raped women, committed atrocities etc. The British were slightly better than the Muslim rulers because they didn’t FORCE their religion on us rather persuaded people to become Christians. Also, they had slightly more humane laws. I still think India 🇮🇳 would be WAY better without any invaders but the people are so peace loving instead of territorial that they even try being friendly with a neighbour like Pakistan that routinely disrupts peace. China is also claiming Indian soil as its own.

When I look at the progress of my country despite centuries of repeated invasions, unfriendly neighbours, a general hostility towards Indians and smartest Indians leaving India to be in the countries that made India poor, I feel pride. I have read history and my conclusion is that Indians never really attacked first but still get attacked. Even the US is seen supporting a hostile neighbour called Pakistan and they’re still years behind us despite gaining independence at the same time. This is why people compare these two countries the most. All the bullies supporting Pakistan and yet India is still getting better. When the British left us, people hardly had the basic things like education, food, houses, cars etc. and now these things are commonplace. The slums are there but those people can live more comfortably in villages. They choose to live in urban slums because they get jobs in the cities.

I still know that the biggest reasons why Eurocentric beauty standards exist is because of colonial oppression. Why do people like their accents more? Because they associate that with the colonisers who oppressed and dominated. Why is posh British accent so popular? Why are people who speak Hindi with a Western accent considered hot or cute? People associate these things with someone who is more powerful or from a rich country.

India must have been a little more united and should have focused on military and protection instead of immersing themselves in education and arts. People were learning how to DESTROY using guns and other weapons while we were writing epics, poems and creating artistic sculptures depicting celestial nymphs with voluptuous bodies as seen in Khajuraho? They were searching for new lands with better spices and we were just sitting here and inventing zero and writing Kamasutra? They were killing Jews and we were learning meditation and yoga?

[Julie4]

In your opinion, from which century to which century has India been the dominant power?

[Mettbltt]

mughal empire was muslim and made india rich

[Babygirl_S]

1st to 16th century. It’s there in the history books

[Babygirl_S]

India before them was still richer. They made it prosperous compared to the British but they forced their religion on us

[Mettbltt]

I still think they are better than the British

[FearlessFlame]

If some people are hostile to Indians, it's because Indians are usually hostile themselves to everyone else and aggressive.
You pretty much hate every other ethnicity, even those that have never wronged or attacked you and even discriminate against your own kind, based on their skin color and caste. Also, it's not accurate that you had visitors from all over the world, as Indians have always been very insular and dislike foreigners, or tourists.
You also think of yourselves as culturally superior to every other civilization/culture in the world, when all civilizations have invented, or contributed something to the world today.

[Babygirl_S]

Many visitors came from China and I can’t speak for all Indians but I am not hostile towards anyone. Rather they are racist towards me. It also surprises me that they’re more racist towards Indian women than Indian men. At least we don’t rape anyone or form grooming gangs. So many videos on the internet about praising Indian men and hating on Indian women. Most Indian marriages survive because the wives tolerate their cheating and abusive husbands. I wonder why you are racist towards Indian women more than Indian men. Can you provide a proof of Indian hostility towards others? People are hostile because Indians don’t look a certain way, get good jobs that pay well, are the most prosperous community in the West without ancestral money etc.
People are even more hostile towards Indian women because you basically worship white women or white skin and you lack the courage to stand up to Indian men who are committing crimes in your countries.
Nothing can change the fact that the Indian civilisation is the oldest.

[Anonymous]

Yes but partly. Europeans got rich off of cheap labor by buying slaves off Africans who got rich selling slaves. Europeans got really rich off of trade, new technology, conquest and empire. Take the British Hudson bay company, British investors got super rich from the fur trade in Canada. How about the east India company, they basically set up a trading post in India and using an army hey recruited of mostly indians they conquered the whole of India. Imagine if today Amazon conquered a country using that country's cotizens to do it. They also took over east-west and west-east trade which for thousands of years came by the silk road. That's why countries like France, Spain, portugal, Holland and Britain that were backwards not very powerful countries at the start of the 1500s became the absolute dominant military, maritime and economic powerhouses to around the 19th-20th centuries while rich country's and empires like the Mongols, mughals, ottomans and Italian city states went into steady decline. They did this through maritime power in the age of discovery.

[SereneScribe3]

Not all European countries engaged or partipated in colonization, or slave trade though. In fact some of them (especially Southern or Eastern European countries) were under foreign rule and occupation for many years themselves. These countries were really poor till recently and still face severe economic problems.

[Opinion Owner]

@SereneScribe3 well you've heard how the west was won. You ever hear how Russia won the east.

[Opinion Owner]

Russia was seriously rich, the people were seriously poor and basically slaves.

[SereneScribe3]

When you say Russia, I take it you're referring to the former Russian empire?

[Anonymous]

Of course, slavery was the back bone of most economies back then. Andrew Jackson brought the US debt down to $0 because of slavery and this took place in the US. It was messed up what he did, but that's how it was back then. Barbados did the same thing with slavery. Before that the Rome empire was made off of slaves. It was the way the economy worked back then. Obliviously traditional slavery doesn't work anymore because most slaves are unmotivated and the production is slower, but slavery still exist it's just different.

You get into debt and you're stuck paying a rich money for years or until you die. Most people listen and believe whatever the slave master tells them. Like for example when people say we should forgive students another person with a slave mindset will say "I had to suffer and pay student loans till I am 80 years old so you should have to do it too" or how people believe Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Donald Trump actually care about them. Jeff Bezos says he's helping the farmers and he cares about the people, but he doesn't he's going into space having fun while all his warehouse workers are force to come into work during a hurricane and pee in bottles with no bathroom break. They have to get searched for 30 mins when they enter and leave the warehouse and it is all unpaid.

When you try to better yourself and go to college, so you won't be stuck in a warehouse they make you pay rich people money for that. Debt for everything to keep you a slave working until you're 80 years old. Trump cuts off pensions and gets rid of unions, so you will stay a slave for the rest of your life. So slavery got a lot of countries rich and is still making countries including Europe.

[buzzword]

Slavery is both inefficient and unprofitable for most economies. That's why in large it ended across most industries. If it turned a buck then it would still exist. Slaves in large are used for unskilled labor. In agrarian civilizations market rates for slaves were set pretty much at subsistence levels. Owning an expensive slave was like owning an expensive piece of farm equipment today. Farms that produce commodity crops barely scraped by as they tried to pay their debt to the bank. As human civilization progressed into the industrial revolution slavery for the most part died out. Once you move beyond basic agriculture and mining, slaves are less efficient than well paid skilled workers that use machinery. This was even proven in Nazi experiments in WWII. So no, the west didn't get rich off of slave labor. That's a fantasy of lazy people.

As for colonization, well in the sense that Europe sailed around the world to set up trading hubs, sure. Europe definitely got wealthy from the art of the deal. Making favorable trades is how everyone gets wealthy. That said, a lot of favorable trades come from producing superior technology with high levels of intellect and creativity. Europeans had that in spaces, thus were able to trade more advanced products for massive amounts of raw materials and that still continues to this day.

[buzzword]

*spades

[RavVid]

It certainly got sugar and rum through slavery and later on cheap cotton cloth.

Potentially we could argue that Europe indirectly got rich from slavery in that there were high value crops to be shipped and wealth to be made. Plantations had factories and were more than farms. In particular cotton allowed mills with the first machine production and all the products we now make somewhat arose from that base.

Even in the 20th, countries found textiles to be the easiest pathway to industrializing. That still seems valid in the 21st century. Bangladesh is starting along this path.

[Julie4]

Europeans began to become the richest region in the world around the 15th century.

[RavVid]

About the time ocean going carracks were developed by Spain/Portugal.

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

In a horribly cold way to say it: Slave labor helps tremendously to stockpile resources, as it is labor that costs very little. The roots of this are going to be deep, what I see is that classical antiquity got rich because of that, from there derives a lot of ulterior wealth. The way I see it, slavery allowed these civilizations to sustain the earliest examples of ancient Republics, meaning, simplified, sustaining a civilization operating with an elite class oriented to knowledge while the slave class ensures food collect and basic operations, for free.

So, in this sense, all that we have now, wealth, tech, resources, planes, stuff. All of that is the byproduct of a long lasting chain of slavery. At least 2000 years, a minima.

[FreyaRed]

No.
Europe got rich trough being competent in some subjects like warfare and technology. Problem of most societies in central Asia, Africa and South America were since centuries cemented cast systems where the huge lowest castes were practically serfs and slaves. Slaves are never good soldiers, workers and discoverers.

Why didn't Indians, Hindus or Bantu conquer Europe?

[Garud]

Indian subcontinent is invaded by the British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and Ottoman Empire.
French colonizers still had enough shame left that we should not destroy the local industry any more we should not sell their own products back to them at insane prices and we should not destroy their carved-out temples. We should preserve their books etc as they contain valuable knowledge.
But the beastly British colonizers were shameless in general.

[Lliam]

Some, but not all, western European countries definitely profited from colonization and slavery over the past 500 years or so. England, Spain, Portugal, in particular, but also Belgium, France, and others, including Italy and Germany.

Of course colonization and slavery happened all over the world before then.

[abc3643]

Well, it didn't hurt.

But, the best thing for Europe was the Black Death. That would lead to the end of feudalism and the Renaissance and, of course, exploration and colonization.

Yeah, it's a shame that so many people died in Europe because of the Black Death 700 years ago, but it fostered the creation of the world we now live in.

[Joshydavid25]

No, slavery wasn't as profitable as people would think.. In Europe.. In America for example, industrialization, proved to be muchmore profitable.. Which is why Frederick Douglass was flabbergasted at how much the North was thriving compared to the South.. The growing moral disgust to it only exacerbated it's ultimate end in The West.. Europe and the United States.. It was very profitable for some African and Arab nations though..

[KostasKouvalis]

I mean, slavery contributed a little bit in some aspects. People aren't gonna like this, but the reality is, Europeans would be just as wealthy if slavery never existed or if black people never existed. Europeans were very successful without slaves. They practiced slavery because of laziness and superiority, not incompetence. They could have done all those things themselves, but they thought, "Why should we, when someone else can do them and for free?"

[Mettbltt]

you should read more

[purplepoppy]

You can't colonise or take slaves if you're not already rich. That wealth was mostly generated through exploitation of their own populations and wars within Europe.

[Billlewis]

Whether I do or not isn't really the point, as far as I'm concerned. Regardless, I don't think you can hold the current generation responsible and try to punish them for it, which is exactly what's happening today, in my opinion.

[Syntosi]

Yepp. Pretty much what happened. The exploitation of people around the world as well as the resources allowed the Europeans to kickstart their industrialization which in turn made them incredibly wealthy and productive to this very day.

[NathanDavis]

no... it only got richer

and made way to keep it like that a bit further

and it was just one of many other factors involved as well

[Dargil]

Europe got rich through Christian Faith and inspired innovation. Now they are losing it. Europe will be essentially gone in 20 years, unless there is (sorry) a Fascist Uprising and ethnic cleansing. The Muslims and North Africans have to go.

[HighValue]

Europe got wealthy mostly from inventions, exploration/extraction and efficient use of resources, and a good work ethic.

[slatyb]

Think? It's pretty obvious that the wealth of Europe (and the US) was extracted at a cost to other people.

[ManOnFire]

Better question: how do YOU think Europe got rich?

[TheStaleMarshmellow]

Played a simulation called RimWorld.

It is economically benefiting

[Mettbltt]

This is not an opinion but a historical fact

[Julie4]

No, Europe was already the richest region in the world before colonization and slavery.

[Mettbltt]

hahaha no
Mughal Empire was the richest region
Until the British took over

[Mettbltt]

All the riches that came to Europe came from the east
There was no wealth in Europe until the geographical discoveries

[Julie4]

No, what you're saying is absolutely false. The richest region in Asia was China.

And Europe overtook China's richest region as early as the 15th century in terms of GDP per capita. So before colonization and slavery

[Mettbltt]

It produced approximately 28% of the world's industrial output by the 18th century and led a strong export-oriented economy with significant exports in textiles, shipbuilding and steel.
At the beginning of the 17th century, economic expansion in the Mughal lands became the largest, surpassing that of the Qing dynasty and Europe. Its share of the world economy grew from 22.7% in 1600 and reached the world's largest GDP, surpassing China by the end of the 16th century.

[Mettbltt]

Additionally, per capita income does not necessarily indicate the wealth of the land.
It is an important factor, but not definitely

[Julie4]

If , historians take into account the GDP per capita as a priority, because for the past century, a population of 80 million inhabitants for example, even if it is very peasant, will have a global GDP of production of wealth higher than a country of only 5 million inhabitants but with a higher level of development, So for historians, the comparison that counts for the past before the industrial era is GDP per capita.

[Mettbltt]

thats true
This still does not change what colonialism and slavery brought Europe to today.

[Mettbltt]

If the wealth in Europe were sufficient, there would be no need to resort to slavery and colonialism.
unless they're too greedy

[Julie4]

The problem is that if Europe succeeded in colonizing its countries and making slaves, it was because it already had the resources and financial means to land in its territories.

What's more, the Africans sold slaves themselves, as did the Chinese and many other countries, and they didn't achieve the same level of economic development.

[Mettbltt]

China has never entered a colonial race like Europe.
Slavery already existed in most parts of the world, they were just used for different purposes
While many countries had the resources and ships that Europe had, they did not resort to anything like colonialism.
While trying to go to India for spices and gold, they found America
They accomplished the colonization slowly, not all at once.

[Julie4]

Above all, the structure of these society prevented them from developing everything Europe had developed.

China stopped maritime exploration because it was wary of trading too much with the outside world. The Ottoman Empire failed to understand the importance and opportunities offered by overseas colonization and a powerful navy.

India is much the same. No one has prevented these societies from creating financial systems such as the stock market, which enabled Europeans to borrow money, thanks to the Dutch in the 17th century, but neither China, India nor any other country has done so.

[Mettbltt]

The Ottomans had already made overseas expeditions
Aceh Expedition or Sumatra Expedition was an overseas expedition carried out by the Ottoman Navy after the Muslim Aceh Sultanate on the island of Sumatra, which was in a difficult situation against the Portuguese, asked for help from the Ottoman Empire.
The important thing here is that the Ottoman Empire never aimed at exploitation.

[Mettbltt]

China and India's access to Africa or the most exploited regions is incomparable to that of Europe.
The fact that Europeans, especially the British, exploit countries through companies does not change the fact that this is exploitation.
As a matter of fact, one of the most important factors that brought Europe to where it is today is exploitation and slavery.
This is something that needs to be accepted.

[Mettbltt]

Of course, I'm not saying slavery and exploitation are the only things that brought Europe to where it is today.
But these are important factors

[Julie4]

No it's absolutely not true, China had one of the greatest empires in history, from the Han to the Qing where it exploited the wealth of the countries under its domination, the Ottoman Empire was not pacifist either, and failed to see the opportunities that a powerful navy and overseas colonization could bring, and the few examples you show are anecdotal, because a navy is built over the long term.

And once again, European countries began to develop modern financial institutions before other regions of the world, so there's nothing to stop other countries from doing the same.

[Mettbltt]

It is true that Europe's financial institutions have noticed

But it still does not change the fact that Europe exploited and thus became rich.
let's talk later please
I need to sleep
Goodnightt

[SereneScribe3]

Not all European countries participated in colonization or slave trade though. In fact some Southern and Eastern European countries were foreign colonies themselves and under foreign rule for many years (such as for examples Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Serbia that were part of the Ottoman empire, or Malta and Cyprus that were British colonies. I take it the question is referring to Western European countries like England, France, Holland and Spain

[Mettbltt]

@SereneScribe3 this is true
But it is not right to call the regions under Ottoman rule colonies.
Because the Ottoman administration style is completely different

[noohair]

The history of the world is a history of war. And the victor gets the spoils.

[gatixek710]

I am one of those people who will never apologize for white excellence

[Anonymous]

The fact is - European colonizers were taking gold and diamonds from the enslaved people in Africa, America, Asia and Australia.

[RetroGirl02]

Thank god they do. :) <3

[Astarlessnightsky]

Sure, that was a big part of it.

[DJB72]

No. I actually studied history.

[Radiate143]

It's a historical fact. Think? Are you ok?

[jahaims]

Every empire used slaves for profit

[Jennz6]

I don’t think so

[Cheerfull009]

Yes I'm not doubt

[eagle1951]

can only go by what i have read

[red-lipstick-girl]

yes of course

[_piotr]

Nope.

[Anonymous]

They did.

[Twalli]

They mostly did

[RedInnocent69]

If the shoe fits…

[beefcakebradybatson]

It did !!!