Europe is wealthy because of stealing things from other people abroad

>Norway
Pioneers in stealing things from abroad
>Netherlands
One of the prime colonial empires
>Switzerland
Stole the jew gold from abroad
>Denmark
Pioneers in stealing from abroad, also participated in colonialism
>Germany
Had large colonial holdings, also stole half of Eastern-Europe
>Sweden
Stole and killed half of Germany
>Ireland
Stole all the potatoes
>Finland
Sold tar for slaving ships and started it's industrialization with cotton picked by slaves

>Australia
the entire country is stolen.

It comes from post-colonialists, cultural anthropologists and other variants of Marxist scum.

It kind of baffles you that these people can't notice that the biggest ex colonialists (UK, Spain, Portugal) are bar none the worst shitholes in Western Europe.

>Norway
>Denmark
Vast untapped oil, they pay royalties to their citizens. Without that, they'd have a monthly average wage more on par with Sweden.

>Swiz
>Luxe

Tax-free havens where rich people park their money and grandly inflate gdp per capita. That and they fufil a regional industry niche - For the swiss, banking, and for Luxe, steel.

This.

>le marxist boogeyman

>Where does this dumb meme come from?
Americans who have a vague grasp of the Columbian Exchange but not enough to understand it beyond black and white terms which support their racial and social viewpoints.

>whitie dindu nuffin
is a stupid meme as well though, American precious metals, crops and land were central to the rise of Europe, the fact that smaller countries within Europe are run better in the 21st century doesn't really change anything.

This is mostly only relevant to America though, in Asia there was more jewing going on than outright stealing, and Europe was already filthy rich by the time they colonised Africa

And stormfags yet again contribute nothing

>post colonialism
>not Marxist

>Where does this dumb meme come from?
Peolple usually prefer to blame others for their problems than themselves

>tfw your country has literally never done anything wrong
>tfw clear conscience

>uh oh, I've been found out
Pray tell, who else but them peddles that bullshit?

>People usually prefer to blame others for their problems than themselves

Which is also a dumb meme. You can just shift the blame from the perpetrators of an act by saying the victims are simply whining and "blaming" someone else.

>looting and raping in Germany
>slave-tar
>butchering the working class
>participating in operation Barbarossa

>Sold tar for slaving ships and started it's industrialization with cotton picked by slaves
Thats not stealing anything from abroad. Thats selling your own goods. Who gives a shit what its used for.

>looting and raping in Germany
proofs?
>Slave-tar
proofs?
>Butchering the working class
Finnish democracy prevailed in the end and the working class got the rights they fought for a few years later without us becoming communist puppets
>Participating in Operation Barbarossa
We only regained our old borders and held those positions until the Soviet counter-offensive.

The point is that basically the entirety of Europe was in the economic sphere that benefited from colonialism, even if it was indirect.

every race is guilty of conquest

whites were just better at it when globalisation really kicked in

Feels bretty good

>>looting and raping in Germany
>proofs?

The thirty years war. Which brought immense wealth to this country.

>>Slave-tar
>proofs?

Kaila, Elmo Edvard: ”II: 1. Terva”, Pohjanmaa ja meri 1600- ja 1700-luvuilla, s. 50. Savon, Karjalan ja Pohjanmaan talonpoikain tervahaudoista oli lähtöisin se terva ja piki, joilla englannin, Hollannin ja Ranskan mahtavain kauppahuoneiden ja -komppaniain Itä-Intian- ja Kiinan-purjehtijat sekä Afrikan rantamaita tyhjentelevät orjalaivat oli sivelty ja tiivistetty, suomalainen piki ja terva kiilteli Trompin, De Ruyterin, Draken ja Nelsonin ja muiden merisankareiden fregattien ja linjalaivojen kyljissä.. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1931. ISSN 0073-2559;14.

>We only regained our old borders and held those positions until the Soviet counter-offensive.

We went well beyond our old borders. The only way that we would've won is if Germany won - which would've included the destruction of St. Petersburg before ti was handed over to us.

With that logic the entire planet was in an econimic sphere that benefitted from colonialism. Even the colonies.

>slave-tar
What a fucking meme. What, did the Finnish merchants refuse to sell the tar unless it was specifically for slave ships?

If so, someone please make a spurdo of it as a source to cite.

>every race is guilty of conquest

Not really. Those indigenous population whose ancestors settled into untamed wilderness didn't conquer anybody.
Unless you consider hunting deer and bison to be "conquest".

>whites were just better at it when globalisation really kicked in

Except the US and the British Empire, most colonies were worthless in the long run.

The European countries simply needed some coastal outpost at most so they can put pressure on the native leaders and force trade, like they did in the coastal regions of Africa and China. Going deeper and taking over those lands was a huge mistake.

>applying tar on ships makes you part of the slave trade
ok

>Not really. Those indigenous population whose ancestors settled into untamed wilderness didn't conquer anybody.

Indigenous peoples often engaged in intertribal warfare over land, resources, women etc and who is to say they didn't wipe out some languages and cultures in the process? humans are shit across the board, if non-whites had the opportunities whites did during the age of discovery they would have done the same

it makes you part of the economic sphere that benefits from slavery.

also by "the same" i mean almost certainly worse

>some poor finnish peasants under the swedish/russian crown on the coast of finland applying tar on ships (not just slave ships) are somehow benefiting from the slave trade

not everyone that you mentioned does this.

So nice generalisation.

i think what you fail to realise is that tar was used for a lot of other things other than slave ships. asking a seller to care what it was used for is really autistic since its a very common material basically. next youll blame the people who produced the nails for the slave ships too.

All that wealth from larger countries trickling down

I did not once blame any individual tarrer. I said that the slave trade and colonialism created wealth that clearly benefited European economies.

>looting and raping in Germany
And do tell me, which historical artifacts taken from Poland and Germany adorn Finnish churches or museums?
None. Looting only gave some soldiers wealth, but the main bulk of the wealth went to mainland Sweden.
>slave-tar
Seriously, I thought this was a Hommaforum strawman. I'm sad to see some people actually use this argument. Again, the same applies here. Tar from Finland was made to generate money for the Swedes, who used it to build up mainland Sweden, rarely any of it came back.
>butchering the working class
Butchering the working class?fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Kallio
Finland saved itself by co-opting communist ideas peacefully after the civil war.

>Which brought immense wealth to this country.
Lie.

>We went well beyond our old borders.
Again, a lie. My friend, why do you do this? Pic related is the extent of Finnish advance

The point is that at some point in time there was no conquest, just human settlement. And some of those populations remained in roughly the same regions since then.
Of course some warfare and migrations happened. They are not "pure".

And conquest does depend a lot on the culture and mindset of the conqueror.
Muslims and European Christians spread so much because their religions required them to spread all over the world and convert others.

At least some of those Indigenous populations who have a purely ethnic religion would be less inclined to go and conquer.
This doesn't necessarily mean all of them wouldn't or that they wouldn't be oppressive towards their own people anyway.

Grand duchy of Finland extent

Most wealth generated by the slave trade and European economic activity didn't go to the provinces of Eastern-Sweden. Most of them went to Sweden proper.

They did have the opportunity and they took it. They are still doing it today. It's only Europeans that developed a sense of justice morality and guilt after conquest.

The Swedish crown gave out new privileges and land holdings across Finland starting from the 30 year war - new cities and the second university of Sweden was founded in Finland as a result of their rise to power. To say that the wealth of Finland did not increase as a result of Swedish conquests is disingenuous.

To think that colonial trade only benefited the area of modern Sweden, even though Finland was considered part of Sweden proper, is also false. To excuse that people were left to die by the thousands after the war by pointing to later reforms is pretty disgusting desu.

>To say that the wealth of Finland did not increase as a result of Swedish conquests is disingenuous.
Over exaggerating it is also disingenuous. Also your argument is very similar to "but we built railways in Africa!!" Yes, Sweden used it's money to upgrade infrastructure in Finland but only to further and benefit Swedish goals. Education, administration and so on were still exclusively for the Swedish or those who spoke Swedish.
>To think that colonial trade only benefited the area of modern Sweden,
My last argument applies here as well
>even though Finland was considered part of Sweden proper
No it wasn't. This is largely a meme made up by people who want to quell Finnish patriotism. If you actually look administrative history of Sweden, you can clearly see that Finland was different from mainland Sweden. It was taxed differently and it was administrated differently.
You do know that one of the Tre Kronor is Finland? That should really put to rest the notion that Finland was just seen as a normal part of Sweden
> To excuse that people were left to die by the thousands after the war by pointing to later reforms is pretty disgusting desu.
You're talking about the civil war now? The situation was the best managed in all of the world. Finland manged to not succumb to fascism or communism, and managed to smooth over to a social democrat model despite class tensions. It didn't happen perfectly, I don't see why you would expect that, but if you take your obvious emotional bias out of it you can see that pre-civil war Finland was handled pretty exceptionally.

Also, I'd like to expand on your point about the working class. Finland didn't even have a real working class before WW2. Pre-WW2 Finland was very much a agricultural society still, it was only after 1945 that for example people started to move to cities en masse and real industrialization started.

>pre-civil war Finland was handled pretty exceptionally.
post*
Also, if other European countries had enacted something similar to Lex Kallio communists would have had a much harder time to take control after WW2.

The main reason why Terijoe's Government failed was that class tensions had been smoothed over so much when WW2 came knocking, and leftist Finns didn't want to become a part of the USSR

hmm let me see
>norway
oil and some industry
>netherlands
still living off of colonialbux extracted from indonesia. royal dutch shell
>switzerland
rich because it skims off all the money corrupt politicians who park their money in swiss banks. it also skims off money from coporations who relocate there and are given low taxes
>australia, denmark, germany, iceland, sweden
pretty clean desu
>ireland
huge foreign tax haven and call center central
>finland
no problems here

>Australia
>((((Germany)))
>clean

None knows what the three crowns really are meant to symbolize. Some even sag its the three wise men.

To compare Finland being a part of the Swedish or Russian crowns to the fucking colonization of Africa is a fucking joke, not that I'd expect any better of you. The three crowns are Svealand, Väst-Götaland and Öst-Götaland and was adopted as a sigil hundreds of years before Finland was part of the Swedish crown.

Finland managed to not "succumb" to communism by commiting bloody murder and being willing to essentially become a vassal-principality of Imperial Germany. Finland did not "succumb" to fascism by essentially accepting all the demands of the fascists - before giving them a slap on the wrist and locking them up for a few months for trying to stage a coup.

Your view of a working-class is also pretty vulgar-Marxist, with an almost Leninist belief in that a proletariat can only exist in a heavily industrialized society.

wat. you realize that tar was used for ships beside slave ships? baltic tar was also used to build the british and dutch navies as well and other commercial ships on the atlantic.

European GDP spikes.

Yes I do!

>>((((Germany)))
>clean
post wwii germany yes...most of their industry was destroyed during wwii
australia wiped out most of the aboriginals and land was stolen from them no doubt, but the population was so small anyway. australia though has rich resources that were not exploited up until that time so you can argue that prosperity was assured so long as a stable government was maintained

>UK
>a shithole

I like how you also conveniently left off all of the other nations which aren't shitholes and were colonial powers

It was an unequal relationship with the colonies, but many of them did you fucking idiot, look at North America / Australia etc. Look at the fact that earth's standard of living is way up as a consequence of the industrial revolution.

Africa is a shithole today because decolonization was a giant mess and because the emphasis was on extracting resources from Africa so that things could be manufactured elsewhere. Even so, they're beneficiaries of many industrial technologies.

He named big players and left out France, which is also not exactly a glorious pinnacle anymore. Besides that, what, Belgium? Germany?

Was the Roman Empire really that shit at producing compared to China and India? Or is all the production that happened outside Italy, France and Roman Britain & Germany not in the graph?

>Europe is wealthy because of stealing things from other people abroad
>Where does this dumb meme come from?

History.

Romans frequently imported goods from outer provinces because Italy itself couldn't produce jackshit.

Well, Asia has always been considerably more populated. That might have made a difference as well.

explain this

Idiots who are too stupid to actually do any research of their own because they are incapable of higher brain functions.

>monthly average wage

Are you even trying?

You sure showed everyone with your in depth analysis.

>IT'S ALL OUT THERE, BRO, TRUST ME
>TRUST
>ME

Can you at least link whatever forum posts you get your information from so we can get it over with? You have to be delusional to think Europe would have industrialized to nearly the same extent without colonialism.

You don't really know how it worked, do you?

How was the Rhineland industrialized in 19th century Prussia? What about Saxony?
The German Empire was largely industrialized before they even started with the colonies in the 1870-80s.

What about France in the early 19th century, when it only had some islands and they barely started with Algeria?

What about Northern Italy before the country was unified and before they even set foot in Lybia?

Belgium as well before they started the whole Congo affair?

...

Now HOL UP

niggas wuz pickin' cotton in the United States which kickstarted this whole textile manufacture shiet

India, too.

Textiles having the influence it did on industrialization I maintain, without those colonies it wouldn't have happened to nearly the same extent. By the time the Germans got on board it was already a phenomenon, they piggybanked on Britain and just innovated on the procedure, and by the time they did European colonialism was already a known quantity. And Germany was the only industrial nation of note who industrialized without having major colonies, the others were subsidiary, like Belgium and North Italy. France wasn't well industrialized either.

I'm not going to make the argument "Industrialization is 100% a consequence of colonialism", I'm saying colonialism fuelled the revolution to an extent that wouldn't have been possible, and and after it began it provided the raw resources to continue manufacturing at such a large rate. It even provided places to offload your goods after you made them, as well as things like rubber.

>Do you think London could be the industrial, commercial and economic giant it was during Victorian era without colonies?
Running the empire was a net drain on Britain. Britain's wealth created the empire not the other way around.

It comes from an economically ignorant zero-sum view of the world.

Western Europe is wealthy because it has a body guard in NATO to protect it from outside aggression

>Education, administration and so on were still exclusively for the Swedish or those who spoke Swedish.

The administrative language was Swedish, and the language of education was largely Latin. Just like in every European state popular vernaculars did only start to get used in administration and education in the 19th century, you fucking idiot.

Directly managing the colonies was an expensive mistake on the part of the British government, but that doesn't magically mean the colonies didn't produce things that profited the colonizing country. When you simplify it to "money invested by government compared to return on investment to the government" you're right, but you should also think about all those rich cunts like Cecil Rhodes who made a killing extracting resources and building infrastructure, and that the resources extracted went into manufacturing goods created at home and then sold that might not be factored into the return on the British government's own investment.

That's a convenient explanation for 1945 onwards, not before.

>think about all those rich cunts like Cecil Rhodes who made a killing extracting resources and building infrastructure, and that the resources extracted went into manufacturing goods created at home and then sold that might not be factored into the return on the British government's own investment.
fair point, but let's be clear investment is not 'stealing'

Noblemen throughout the kingdom were fluent in French and merchants knew German. Different languages being used in different social classes and contexts is something that happens throughout Europe.

Before it had its own powerful militaries to defend their interests

>but let's be clear investment is not 'stealing'

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.

But basically what I was trying to say was that even if the state didn't come out ahead, private interest in Britain by and at large did. Whether the common man came out ahead given the working conditions in the Victorian era could probably be the topic of a big debate, but Britain's wealth was definitely improved when you go beyond the state treasury (and even then, I have to wonder how much the state made from the private industry that benefited even if it wasn't tax dollars extracted explicitly from the colonies).

Yeah Eastern-Europe sure defended their interests powerfully in the 30s and 40s.

France, Britain and Germany still have adequate militaries today.

I'm getting at OP's original question.
Colonialism facilitated a level of western economic investment that had never been seen before (or since)
This is not "stealing".
It's not the primary cause of Western wealth and while it lasted was a net benefit for both parties.

>first reply is "nigs, libs and cucks"

yeah, im gonna stay on Veeky Forums now. it even has better historical discussion than this shitposting board. ill still come back every now and again for the very few good threads

So?

Are you saying that having a strong military is the primary requisite for wealth? What about the fact Europe was regularly using its own powerful militaries against other European states?

There was an argument to be made for the stabilizing factor of NATO - The military alliance system keeps all of western Europe on the same side and thus not constantly worried about, say, Germany invading France off the cuff tomorrow. But that can't explain before NATO happened, and if all the argument is is "muh strong military" what about when your neighbor also has a strong military?

Oh, right.

Well yes, I don't think "stealing" is an adequate way to explain it on the nose, but at the same time European colonialism, particularly in Africa, was a very unequal affair. Personally I think if Europeans had a bit longer and decolonization hadn't gone so badly Africa would be on average better off today than it turned out to be independent, but that doesn't mean it was a fair exchange.

It's kind of like the term 'highway robbery' for when someone swindles you and you don't really have an alternative.

I mentioned Western Europe specifically. Eastern Europe today still is poor as shit for the most part.
>Are you saying that having a strong military is the primary requisite for wealth?
It's neccesary to defend said wealth yes
>What about the fact Europe was regularly using its own powerful militaries against other European states?
Nearly lead to its economic downfall and also the collapse of its empires. The first decade of Post WWII Europe generally sucked dick for most people.

fascinating reflection on the end of the empire from an English doctor who lived through it's final days:
www.city-journal.org/html/after-empire-12420.html

While I don't disagree that peace is beneficial for stability and commerce, I also don't think it's quite relevant to why Europe is so far ahead considering their militaries didn't ensure peace and that Europe frequently had some pretty godawful wars.

It's relevant because when the militaries
became sufficiently powerful, they'd come to a stalemate like you see in Post Congress of Vienna Europe. Said militaries were very important toward protecting their trade interests (see the Opium Wars for example) and generally ensuring safety to growing European enterprise both at home and abroad.

I think it was a major factor in ensuring that peace lasted long enough to bring about other developments. This is of course until Great Wars did eventually break out and nearly ruin Europes economic advantage.

Well, I can agree with that.

They pretty much are, though. These European countries are culturally problem-solvers. Whiny countries/groups of people always play the victim with their 'waaahh whites took everything!'.

>These European countries are culturally problem-solvers.

Yes, but sometimes the problems Europeans want to solve and the means they take don't align with other people's interests.

If you're a Jew and a German wants a final solution to the Jewish problem, you're not the beneficiary of that problem solving equation.

Monthly average wage doesn't mean shit when everything in your country is stupidly overpriced.

>mfw people don't realize how much of a meme nation Norway is

They're the Saudi Arabia of Europe, shit drives me crazy.

t. Faggot who has never been there

>Saudi Arabia.
>Torture & executions of criminals.

>Norway
>A prisoner complains of his lack of playstation being a human rights violation.

>sweden
>clean

Is it untrue? Dutch wealth began through domination of the Indonesian spice trade. The Netherlands' fossil fuels is far more recent.

Norway's economy is much more ethical, but they were essentially a developing country until the discovery of North Sea oil.

No, the Empire was a boon for the British GDP. Just not the British government's budget.

the deluge did nothing for sweden. sure they got some neat loot but nothing in the way or money or territory because partisans devoured their armies. I guess you can say they benefited from it in the sense that they eliminated a competitor for hegemony on the baltic, but forty years after Charles xii found it necessary to invade poland again and beat charles augustus until he was forced to abdicate, after which Charles got btfo at Poltava. Hardly a happy outcome for either Sweden or Poland. Also, the swedes if anything destroyed tons of polish heritage than they did "steal" it for the adornment of their own country, which is even sadder