[yazan94]

Or Europeans went to Africa, Asia, and the Americas and extracted as much of the natural resources as possible at the expense of the indigenous populations and without a thought to the future sustainability of the lands. Some examples that spring to mind:

* Spanish silver mining in the Americas. 150,000 tonnes of silver were extracted between 1500-1800 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_1...). It isn't hard to understand who benefited from that silver, Spain or the South American colonies.

* African slave trade which exported 10-15 million people from Africa. In 1850, Africa had about 50 million people when it should have had closer to 100 million, when accounting for lack of reproduction, if it weren't for the slave trade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Africa#Atl...)

> Europeans came into Africa and Asia and stole all the factories, leaving Africans and Asians to revert back to agricultural societies?

How about actively passing laws to make sure that the colonies could not survive without the mother country by restricting trade. Maybe start reading about these colonial times a bit more. What you find may surprise you

[asianthrowaway]

The Spanish silver mines actually ended up bankrupting Spain by causing runaway inflation. Not really a good example!

[yazan94]

yes, but that was years down the line. And the point was replying to your earlier rebuke of this:

> Simply stating the facts that Europe’s wealth is because of world looting

I would say my example actually makes my point very well in that context.