Bill,
After I responded I realized I may have
misunderstood what you and LP said.
I agree the colonizer's gain could be more than
offset by the victimized country's economic
losses, so that we could say in net terms
capitalist colonization did not contribute to the
world's productive capacity.
It could be true at the same time, however, that
colonization contributed little to development in
the colonizing nations themselves, owing to the
small contribution to GNP RD cited. It seems
possible on this account that industrialization
could have proceeded without imperialism, or that
imperialism cannot be explained without recourse
to additional factors, some probably not narrowly
economic.
> Sure, but if you only measure the GNP returns of trade, you are
> missing the big negative on the other side of the balance sheet. If
> you wipe out an entire continent and only increase your GNP in nominal
> terms by 2% measured by trade with exploited countries, you have not
> addressed what you may have done to their capacity to compete with you
> in the future. For example, I believe the Bengal region of India was
> highly productive both in agriculture and in textiles, before the
> British arrived. They wiped it out, and protected their textiles
> and agriculture thereby.
MBS
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