Ok, you won, my original claim that “Germany industrialized without colonial benefit” is false. I am defeated. I will claim that “Germany industrialized with minimal colonial benefit where minimal represent an economical input that is less then 5% of GDP by 1880”.
then I will stop this charade. Have a nice day, king of worthless discussion
Learn to read the context when discussing, it is really like chatting with a robot…
Rubber was not a thing in 1880
CONTEXT: Germany 1880, trying to establishing the relevance to national wealth of rubber imported from colonies.
COMPLETE EXPLANATION: do the math, in 1880 we are before the invention of pneumatic bicycle tire, before the automobile industry, before rubber plantation in Congo and Asia. Global production is 11K tons, almost entirely from the Empire of Brazil, not a colony of a European country, most of which goes to Britain, US and France. At 1880 that is less then 0.2% of GDP for Germany. To me in the context of establishing the reason for Germany wealth being driven by colonial exploitation that is nothing. If for you 0.2%, 0% of which is from a colony, is worth discussing over then you are totally missing the point.
Shipping insurance wasn’t a thing in 1880
CONTEXT: original quote “European banks, shipping, insurance”. We are talking about the system put in place to facilitate exploitation of colonies.
COMPLETE EXPLANATION: Stressing “European”. Europe was not a thing. Shipping insurance was a thing since medieval age. Was Florence banking system and Genoa shipping insurance in 1300 put in place for exploitation of colonial empires? No, it was put in place to facilitate trade. My mistake in assuming you meant a unified “European” system of exploitation as the alternative was just silly. If you really meant banks and insurance then good for you, on a national level that was a thing and totally irrelevant to the conversation.
Germany didn’t import minerals or agricultural supplies
CONTEXT: you said “British and French colonies supplied cheap cotton, rubber, minerals”. I asked you which mineral. Your quote is not a quote, I never said that. The context is still colonial exploitation, and by asking which mineral I have implied there is no mineral import from British or French colonies relevant to the conversation.
COMPLETE EXPLANATION: The only mineral not from a European country in your list was tin. Germany had tin deposits on the border with Bohemia, but most of the Tin was from Cornwall. So most of what was true for rubber is true for Tin we are talking a very small portion of GDP most of which was from Britain. The rest was from Malaya
The fact that you cannot grasp a contextual analysis and instead search for futile points to strawman when your points are trash tell me everything I need to know. Seems I hit the nail on the head as they say (bullseye). 🤣
I am not a german teenager, are you a fucking AI? Because you are sounding just like AI following a script of bad training.
“cannot isolate a national economy”, “never purely national”, no shit Sherlock. But we are discussing insignificant parts of a nation wealth. Rubber in 1880 Germany was like 0.2% on GDP if I am being generous. Deutsche Bank is a national bank. By 1880 Germany with no colonial empire was a capital exporter, not importer. Sweden and Spain, your typical african colonies.
Why are we discussing this shit?
This entire reply is bullshit. Is difficult to keep up with so many lies.
In 1880 Germany was mostly self sufficient in generating capital from traditional industries (like agriculture) and the rise of the middle class. The only foreign capital injection was from France as part of the settlement reached after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. You continue to lie about “European banks, shipping, insurance” like this was a thing in 1880. Capital was coming from national banks and industrial reinvestment. And the same lies continues with rubber (not a thing in 1880), and mineral (which one exactly?). I can grant you import from US cotton plantation, but while they had problems with slavery, that was not the result of colonial exploitation, but access to market.
False equivalence. China and India are not shaping the rules of the global market […] Germany in 1880 was part of the core that designed and enforced the colonial order. China in 2026 is challenging that order.
False. The hegemon in 1880 was the British Empire, the bank of England and the Royal Navy. Germany was actually against the British world order, and the raise of Germany as adversary of the economic dominance of the British Empire is one of the core reasons for WW1
Stop pretending that isolating one variable in 1880 explains a global system of accumulation.
I am fucking tired of generalization applied to “the West” like a giant forever unified monolite of evil as a way to deflect from the same shit done all the time by powerful nations like China that has implicit procurement (chinese companies, materials and labor with no knowledge transfer), political (you must cut ties with Taiwan) and economical (you must export to us oil, copper, cobalt ) conditions on loans.
This was just an example to show that colonial exploitation is not the reason why some countries are rich. It is not for China, it is not for Germany, it is not for Italy (for both countries the colonial empire was a massive net financial loss).
And you repeating the same lies is so tiring that makes me think those books are not that good.
I am not going in circle! I am being precise.
I set the date as 1880 multiple times exactly because both Italy and Germany were among the richest countries in the world by that date without a colonial empire. Who cares about 1941, this is not relevant to the conversation. It is indeed the case that industrialization came before colonization. As I have stated before, steel and carbon are the main driver.
If market access is enough of a benefit to be part of the exploitation system, that means that China and India which are also benefitting from global market access and capital, are part of the system of colonial exploitation. If you grant that 2026 China and 2026 India are colonial exploiter according to your world view I will grand that 1880 Germany and 1880 Italy are colonial exploiter according to your world view.
Chinese investment does not come with structural adjustment programs. No demands for privatization, austerity, or deregulation. No regime change tied to loans. Debt renegotiations happen without military intervention.
does EU lending program for Africa? Not to my knowledge. Do you have some data that justify this? You continue to assert stuff that is not backed in reality.
Ok again for the 3rd time:
ok, again, I was very specific in my sentence.
Britain and Belgium are brutal example of growth driven by colonial exploitation. Germany and Italy are not. So while we agree that is the case for Britain and Belgium, those are not good sources to explain why this is “necessary”.
Why are you fighting me on opinion we share already? - Because you are not sharing the opinion.
We fucking do in the context of that sentence. Obviously I did not meant that we share “all” the opinion we discussed in this conversation! The lack of context awareness of each of your sentences is so frustrating, and is exactly the same problem highlighted at the start of this message
Finally, I do not understand why you give China a pass. When China gets billions in capital from the World Bank, or trillions in FDI after they joined the WTO why are they not benefiting from colonial exploitation, but 1880 Germany was a colonial exploiter because they bought raw material on the open market? When China force the “One China” principle, the “No Paris Club”, and tied procurement clauses (no skill transfer and no job creation) it is fine, but EU lending frameworks conditions likes anti-corruption, green transitions, and finance sustainability are bad? Why the double standard?
You are just stating that colonial relationship is the main driver of capital accumulation. Your entire argument depend on this. And I do not see enough evidence to justify this. Can you provide factual evidence that is necessarily the case and not something that happen sometimes? Lacking that this entire discussion is based on nothing.
You are an idiot for peddling this “smarter Europe” nonsense (one level removed from phrenology style nazi race science). The facts are not on your side.
I will happily say “smarter Mongols” when they were in an hegemonic position (because of innovative military technology, strong administrative capacity and command of economy and trade). There is nothing racist in that sentence. I am not claiming that European people are biologically more intelligent. That is absurd. I am saying that the cumulation environmental, cultural and historical events made it so in that moment in time they made choices we now consider smart because enabled objective we now consider valuable. You are an idiot for interpreting something so clear, in a “race” kind of way.
You are fighting straw man and making unjustified assumption about what I think. Should I read on how Europe underdeveloped Africa to have this conversation? That is an universal truth that most sane person agree on. Why are you fighting me on opinion we share already?
So in the end of all of this discussion we are more or less agreeing on reality.
The only difference is that you think that somewhat private companies should refrain from increasing their value by any means that could introduce a dependency between two separate countries, and that means in practice you want to ban foreign direct investment globally. I simply say that there is no support for this in the current capital based society by both the companies and the countries receiving the investment. There is nothing forced in China neocolonialism for example. That is pure foreign investment exploitation.
But just to clarify some points, Europe is actually richer because it was smarter, better governed and more innovative. How the fuck do you think was possible for an island of 10 million people to control half the world? Why does the world let them do it? Do you think that this was not the same as the time Rome, a city state in the middle of Italy, controlled the entirety of Europe and Nord Africa? Colonialism is a consequence of being richer, innovative and better governed, not a driver.
This is propaganda slop. Germany industrialized on cotton from colonized Africa, rubber from the Congo, minerals from occupied territories. Its banks financed colonial ventures. Its firms sold into colonial markets protected by British and French guns. Italy likewise. No direct colonies does not mean no colonial benefit. The entire European system was integrated. Extraction in the periphery subsidized accumulation in the core. That is the material record.
No, the material record says that most important drivers for early Germany industrialization were coal and steel, railways, chemical and electrical engineering and agriculture. Raw materials import on the global market accounted for at most 10% of the GDP. Certainly relevant, but to say that Germany industrialization was built on colonialism is simply false. It was built on locally sourced pure german coal mined by poor german people.
No I am not confirming your point at all. Not attaching another country that is exploiting neocolonialism is not the same as supporting: it is tolerating an abuse. Thats it.
The social, economic and military stability of the West is absolutely not built on neocolonial extraction. That is utterly absurd. You need to frame this statement. If a german company is providing capital, jobs and infrastructure to a developing country via foreign direct investment is it neocolonial extraction for you? What exactly is the neocolonial extraction of Spain for example? Are we talking bought assets of telephone companies and banks in latin America?
The West is rich because it developed a highly productive, technology advanced, well-governed domestic economy. Germany was one of the strongest industrial economy by 1880 without a single colony. The same was true for Italy.
Nobody deny that some western and non western countries have some strong form of control and direct power projection on developing countries (as I said already, mainly US, Russia, China and France). But that comes with being a powerful country (or powerful company) that has the means to impose themself on other. That has always been the case.
Yes, welcome to realpolitik. You face consequences if someone stronger than you wants you to face consequences.
Do you think Italy would ever sanction France and leave the EU, destroying their entire economy in the process, on principle?
Europe kept being dependent on Russia giving them money fueling their war of conquest in Ukraine for years, and they still do that despite the sanctions and billions of euros spent to arm Ukraine. Do you really think they are not willingly letting the shadow fleet exist? Are you really that naive?
I have said “Major” meaning the form of colonialism that have the biggest economic impact. Belgium neocolonialism and Dutch neocolonialism are not nearly on the same scale as the others I have shared.
France colonialism is not fully backed by allies. Heck, Italy nearly went into a proxy war with France in Libya after they decided that Gaddafi was not good for “humanitarian reasons” and backed LNA against UN-supported GNA. If those are allies supporting each other then I need to rethink the meaning of the world. See Meloni blasting France on national television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NBf1C4YMNw
Major modern colonizer countries are the United States, China, Russia, and France. Criteria for being considered a colonizer have to be a little bit more strict then “I have wasted toons of money trying to control a country between 1936 and 1941 for prestige”.
NATO is not EU
So it is not Britain, France, the US, the Soviet Union that destabilized the Middle East. It is the EU, that without an army, a common foreign policy and a common mandate that caused it.
And Spain obviously, those evil apathetic monsters.
The west
Not like Spain is causing this. This is Israel and the US.
Russia uses Iranian design, but produce locally. Some reports that Russia is now providing Iran with Iranian type drones build in Russia.
It is indeed good, but let’s not ignore that wind and solar is just 20% of electricity production, with coal being the absolute majority of electricity production in china at 60%. Furthermore china has a vast strategic petroleum reserve and a clear alternative in Russia.
Now Russia build Iranian drones by itself in local factories. But Iranian wars gave billions of dollars to Russia thanks to easing of sanctions and higher oil prices. For Russia the Iran war is good, not bad. The margins on oil production has skyrocketed.
Even when Putin kills American soldiers and Ukraine helps the US defend against Iranians drones retaliations, for Trump the enemy is still Europe and Ukraine. The only reason why he bombed Iran instead of Greenland is lobbying from Israel. He is stupid, irrational and manipulable like he always has been. The fact he is a Mamdani supporter against everything he believes in should add to the notion he is not a rational actor, but a spoiled senile brat that will do whatever he want against reality.
I am so embarrassed in front of your clearly superior knowledge. You made so many unbiased relevant defining points tonight that I really struggle to reconstruct my flawed vision of global socioeconomic dynamics.