it was called "colony" back then and Western Europe was doing it for several centuries. For example the wonderful rubber being a major part of the European technological leap at the end of 19th - beginning of 20th century was produced in Belgian Congo where not doing your daily quota would for example result in your family members mutilated or killed:
"How to get that rubber, as much and as quickly as possible?
In the absence of scruples, the answer was distressingly simple. Send armed men to a village, kidnap the women and children, and if their menfolk did not bring back enough rubber, chop off a hand - or kill a family."
No. We just exterminated countless indigenuous peoples/nations and stole their land. Not to mention stealing resources/capital from china, india, middle east, africa, etc plunging much of the world into unimaginable poverty from which many still haven't recovered. Nothing as terrible as the gulags...
People are naturally born poor. Nobody told the Chinese or Africans to create that many poor people. Most of those children were born with the expectation that they die early. Isn't that cruel?
Poland had been split 3 times by a Prussian+Austrian+Russian alliance long before WW2. Some of those nations were even trying to forcibly transplant their own culture in Poland.
This is a great lesson for all those playing Civilization-like games.
Don't start a country on plains without any mountains or hills blocking access from at least 3 sides.
Poland was unlucky by having mountains in south, where we have rather peaceful nations. Sea from north (Swedes invaded Poland once, but that's mostly it) and nothing (except forests) from west (with Germany) and Russia in the east.
(of course now it is a bit different, but lack of natural obstacles from east/west is still real).
OK, so which West countries had plantations?
Did Germany have them? Yeah, first ones in 1884 and lost all of them in 1914.
And it was most industrialized country.
Unification into the German Empire didn't happen until 1871.
The parts that were industrialized were part of France. Germany itself didn't undergo a massive industrialization until a century after Britain.
The western industrialization didn’t create gulags in the western world, but it was largely paid for by untold cruelty in Asia and Africa, and slavery in the US. Concentration camps existed far before the Nazis, and many millions died through genocide and famine created by the European powers.
it was called "colony" back then and Western Europe was doing it for several centuries. For example the wonderful rubber being a major part of the European technological leap at the end of 19th - beginning of 20th century was produced in Belgian Congo where not doing your daily quota would for example result in your family members mutilated or killed:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48533964
"How to get that rubber, as much and as quickly as possible?
In the absence of scruples, the answer was distressingly simple. Send armed men to a village, kidnap the women and children, and if their menfolk did not bring back enough rubber, chop off a hand - or kill a family."