Exploiting and stealing always makes you rich. An empire doesn't make sense if you don't get rich with it (Also see the connection of Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution). The only problems: It's amoral stealing and exploiting others and it's not infinite, people don't want to be exploited so the empire gets more and more expensive to run.
Colonies have Britain an edge, but plenty of nations had colonies at the time (and have throughout history). Britain became rich because it industrialised first.
Second: "Cotton Capital: a special investigation 2023 Cotton Capital how slavery made Manchester the world’s first industrial city"
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/03/...
"We can be rich again!"
"But the wealth was based on slavery, that is no longer"
"Others had slaves too!"
"We can be rich again!"
"But the wealth was based on slavery, that is no longer"
"Others had slaves(-trade) too, but we were the richest, so I doesn't depend on slaves?"
> so I doesn't depend on slaves?"
One, don’t fake quote others. Two, nobody argued this. American wealth depends on agriculture and energy (and having taken that from our Indians); that doesn’t mean betting on corn and fracking is a good economic plan, or that Argentina is a surefire bet for sharing those same strengths.
Regardless of how it was acquired, Britain sits of a massive pool of capital. That capital gives it opportunities others cannot access. The argument from its previous prowess is not one for returning to colonialism, but for the existence of the social and economic infrastructure for commanding production past what you’d expect from its population in the way America, China, Japan and Germany do. (Economies Nos. 1 through 4. And yes, we see the same common histories in the set.)
I'm not faking quotes, I want to understand your argument about slaves/other people had slaves too/we can be rich again, so I asked if you've meant that. I asked "Or is it:" - which makes it clear this is not a quote.
Your "fake quotes" shows me we have different logic and a different understanding of rhetorical terms, and won't come to any agreement on that basis.
The point is Britain had slaves. But so did other powers that it dominated economically (and occasionally militarily). Slaves didn’t make “North England’s economy as a whole…among the strongest in Europe and thus the world”; slaves merely made it rich. Britain is already rich. Its future prosperity doesn’t need to come from exploitation.
Like, Britain also had trees. And mailboxes. And black pudding. But trees and mailboxes and blood sausages aren’t why it had one of the strongest economies in the world. Similarly, yes, Britain had slaves, but slaves weren’t why it had the strongest economy in Europe, a continent with several slavery enthusiasts.
> The construction of the Bridgewater canal provided regular, cheaper coal supplies to power the new machinery and improved transport links to Liverpool. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 proved crucial in shaping Manchester’s future.
And then because a lot of the raw cotton was supplied from slave plantations it implies the slavery caused the cotton gins, whereas I expect it was the other way around. If there had been no slavery they probably would still have got cotton from paid farmers overseas with much the same effect.
The Watt Steam Engine is from 1765.
The "Scramble for Africa" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa
hit peak pitch following 1870 or so and saw 90% of Africa "claimed" by 1914, the Great War and the rise of the Vickers Machine Gun (which evolved from the Maxim).
The Germans, in particular, began to show great commercial interest in the Samoan Islands, especially on the island of Upolu, where German firms monopolised copra and cocoa bean processing.
leading to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoan_Civil_War
Profit is revenue minus cost. Cost of colonisation is vastly reduced if the target nation is infighting. Cocoa was absolutely valuable, but Samoa’s attractiveness may have also been in its inability to defend itself. (Particularly against European weapons.)
There's a robust pattern of increased infighting wherever the European colonists went .. almost as if they delibrately sowed discontent and sold weapons at discount to all sides.
Stock Exchanges evolved from Dutch and London Coffee Houses and the Maxim Gun is also famous in cementing the "No Compete" clause into law ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordenfelt_v_Maxim_Nordenfelt_...
Nordenfelt cemented severavility; non-competes were already commonplace. (In that case, the blue pencil was used to restrict the scope of the non-compete. But that’s not why it’s important.)
where she argues advances in capitalism predated and caused the industrial revolution and scientific progress. It's an interesting hypothesis.
Relevant bit in vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRPHp2EjNR8&t=275s
The first British government bonds and companies going public were about 1693 and a little after and we had a proper market bubble and crash in 1720 so that stuff was well developed by the time of steam engines.