Theft, colonialism, an international legal system that supports this and never made them pay back the nations they stole resources and labor from for hundreds of years.
How did Portugal go to India and manage to steal everything?
Why were the Ottoman not more successful, they had far more colonies. In fact, the countries that went from unsuccessful to successful were those that didn't have colonies. Colonies were the result of their success.
This explains literally nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies
You also kind of have to count Norway as part of the larger Dano-Norwegian colonization effort with a sprinkle of the Swedish one.
- Kalmar Union (1397 - 1523)
- Dano-Norwegian Realm (1524-1814)
- United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway (1814 - 1905)
- Independent Norway (1905 - )
Taking over other places around you and politically dominating it is as old as history.
You can't use colonialism as an explanation for anything because in the whole world there were wars and people taking over their neighbors.
Its a matter of linguistics and historiography when we use the term 'colony'.
I believe it's important to acknowledge a distinction between, as you say, politically dominating a region with an intention of expanding the home country and depleting a region of its wealth, exporting it away while imposing an administration with no willingness to co-operate with local population other than for the purposes of wealth extraction.
And its also a limited history of colonialism to claim its only wealth extraction above and beyond what other empires would do.
> while imposing an administration with no willingness to co-operate with local population
If anything Europeans because of their limited population had more intensive to do so.
The British take over of much of India was literally a vastly majority Indian affair. The war was fought by Indian troops, supplied by Indian merchants and farmers, it was financed by taking loans from Indian bankers. The amount of British people involved were almost vanishingly small given the size of India.
Did Indians have more control over involvement over India then Greeks did over Greece in the Ottoman empire?
I don't think you can make any generalization that European invasions of other countries were uniquely destructive or extractive compared to world history. There are certainty cases like Kind Leopold's regime in Congo but we can't reduce 600 years of European history to that.
The Swedish in the Thirty years war didn't intend to settle or claim the lands they were fighting in - they just fought against a religious enemy and for power/influence/French money. ( Pomerania is somewhat of an exception).
> the proxy spoils of colonialism
Yes, that’s a thing. Here’s an essay that I found with one Google search. It clearly illustrates exactly the kind of disillusionment in your stance.
> The Swedish Crown, merchants, and political leadership shared a Eurocentric worldview and supported the right to conquer, dominate, and civilize in the name of superiority and technological advancement. But there was also a specifically Swedish twist to colonial ideology: Swedish neutrality turned out to be a strategic position and to offer competitive advantages in relation to colonial superpowers at war. When Britain and the Netherlands were fighting, Sweden exported cannons to the Dutch and iron for weaponry to the Brits. France could, when fighting Britain, rely on Swedish shipping of smuggled slaves, weaponry and other goods in the Caribbean. Also, hundreds of US trade ships managed to avoid customs by sailing under Swedish flag—and thus Sweden could maintain the lucrative Saint Barthélemy trade traffic.
(https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrali...)
So what if Swedes mined their own iron? Did you read the rest of the essay? My point was about overall mutual enrichment in Europe, on the back of colonialism. There is ample material outside of my link that detail it further. Arguing that the victims could’ve armed themselves better, still doesn’t prove Sweden’s “innocence”. They mined their “own” iron to make “advanced” cannons to help the colonising kingdoms kill natives and enslave them.
So then, how did they get so superior military technology? It wasn't colonialism, they didn't import guns from their colonies and the colonial powers weren't ahead of the rest of Europe in military technology.
If we focus on your post now, your core point is that Europe was better at military technology and hence could colonise better. Saying you could build weaponry doesn’t prove pre-wealth - it just means you could allocate Human Resources to weapon building whereas developing countries chose not to. And, if you research enough, you’ll see that the riches (that this post is talking about) came from a lot of colonialism and stealing. You don’t seem to address that from my post at all?
I don’t understand the wealth or GDP argument at all tbh. We’re talking about a colonial pre-globalised economy world - wealth did not have an international standard, countries created money as they needed and then our modern society adopted a worldview wherein developed countries are valued less to keep them in eternal poverty. There is no basis for an Indian vs European GDP, when neither existed in that age and all trade was through colonial exploitation.
What riches? Were the homes in Sweden made by materials imported from colonies? Were the food they ate imported from colonies? Cotton clothes I can give you, but wool clothes were still the most common, and I doubt the entre society of Sweden were revolutionized thanks to cotton clothes. Potatoes were from colonies, but they were still home grown, the potatoes eaten in Sweden weren't stolen from anywhere.
Precious metals aren't riches for a society, just riches for the elite, you can't eat or live in gold. England getting a lot of gold doesn't help Sweden in any way.
So why was Sweden selling this advanced cannon technology and sailing slave ships for Britain et all, in exchange for metal money - which like you say wouldn’t help the average Swede? Surely, they could’ve just kept to themselves and built things for themselves. Why did the neutral Swedes even attempt their own colonies? Seems like a waste of resources.
(https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrali...)
Anyway, you’ve been ignoring most of my arguments and furthering your own Byzantine narrative. I was attempting to educate in good faith, but I shall cease to engage now.
No, it's your arrogant blasé finger-pointing and insinuations of racism left and right that is offensive. I'm not a native European. I migrated here.
The question that is being asked is: what caused the change in those 150-200 years?
In the 70s, the Ford administration and Henry Kissinger cobbled together $50,000,000.00 to go to Argentina. This "foreign aid" was given to dictator Jorge Rafael Videla to disappear communists and dissidents all over the country on the behest of the U.S.
Has "the West" truly paid their dues, or do they have even more blood on their hands?