[anovikov]

Conquest went in 3 main stages.

Spain and Portugal did it first, long before Industrial revolution (which Spain had much much later and only halfway, and Portugal never had at all). They did it because they could: finishing reconquest of their territories from Arabs in the late XV century, they only saw foreign expansion as continuation of the same trend: Christendom acquires more land from the infidels, with divine assistance, they saw it as their natural life role and mission and same thing they kept doing for 700 years before, just on land.

Then, Netherlands, UK and later France acquired some territories - Netherlands for the purpose of trade (was before Industrial revolution and industry wasn't involved), UK because of religious issues - to push out people of "wrong" religions, like Puritans, as far away as possible, and France, well, because they saw it was going fashionable and they sort of felt compelled to do the same not properly realising why (resulting in the most ridiculous and useless empire imaginable).

Finally, Germany did it when they got so belatedly reunified after 1870 - they simply happened to grab some colonies from France because they won the Franco-Prussian war. Also never figured what to do with those.

In every case, only with the latter part of British colonialism, industry played some role (when colonies were used as source for industrial raw materials e.g. cotton from U.S. South), or market to sell them (India). Military capabilities brought forward by industrialisation, never had a role properly.

[qwytw]

> Netherlands for the purpose of trade (was before Industrial revolution and industry wasn't involved),

That's arguable. I mean they didn't have the steam engine, but besides that the Dutch economically was relatively industrialized according by most other metrics (high urbanization, high amount of energy usage (wind, peat, water), relatively very high labor productivity etc.)

Trade allowed the Netherlands to acquire huge amounts of capital but unlike some other countries (e.g. Spain) they didn't waste it and instead invested into dramatically increasing the productivity of their economy .

[ameister14]

The UK did not acquire territories because of religious issues and to push out Puritans. It was economics. Your explanation in general is a massive oversimplification - most of the time, governments weren't intentionally driving colonization. England favored economic growth with corporations running the show.

Jamestown, for example, was not founded by the government of England but instead by an investment company in search of riches. The Puritans as well; the government didn't put them on a boat, they bought a charter from the Virginia Company.

[qwytw]

For quite a while the North American colonies weren't really that valuable economically compared to the ones in the Caribbean or Asia.

British colonies were somehow able to attract massive amounts of settlers and eventually became self sustainable. The Dutch, French and others could never achieve that and mainly relied on the fur trade with the Native populations.

[ameister14]

I wouldn't say "massive" amounts of settlers, certainly not for the first hundred years or so. The huge migration was in the 18th century.

For example, Virginia, the most populous colony at the time, had about 58k people in 1700 but over 530,000 by 1780.

The colonies as a whole grew by about 245,000 people in the 17th century and 2,550,000 in the subsequent 80 years, before the American Revolution. I should mention, however, that these numbers include the number of enslaved persons, about 575,000 people in 1780. That's a growth from around 6% of the total population in 1700 to over 1/5 of the total population of the colonies and around 40% of the population of Virginia in 1780.

It's not that much of a mystery how the British colonies became financially successful; most of it was due to location and slavery. It's the same reason that, while the French and Dutch were not as much of an economic success in their North American colonial holdings, they (and the Brits) were a huge financial success in the Caribbean. By importing people enslaved in Africa to work sugar plantations and not worrying about the death rates, the investors and colonial powers were able to make a substantial profit.

edit - obviously there are a lot more layers to that.

[anovikov]

Right: the government of England had a problem with religious sects and needed to push them out somewhere. That created demand on the part of Puritans who didn't want to get hanged at home, to emigrate, and King happily approved it because it meant good riddance.

[ameister14]

Allowing someone to move there is different from acquiring territory for that purpose.

[anovikov]

Well, with those territories not having defensible or Christian state, from standpoint of XVII century, those were exactly the same: those lands were "empty" and those settlers, by settling there as royal subjects, claimed it for the Crown.

If they settled in some country rules of which they'd find obliged to obey - either because it was Christian, or because it was too strong to ignore with their forces - they couldn't claim land and instead, will become immigrants, then of course it's not colonisation.

[ameister14]

The lands were claimed for the Crown years earlier in the first grant to the Virginia Company, which gave them lands ranging 100 miles inland from the coast and from the 34th to 45th parallels. (http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1600-1650/the-first-virg...) It's why they made the Popham Colony. The first wave of Puritans to migrate weren't even living in England at the time, they had already moved to the Netherlands.

[fakedang]

Why is the French Empire the most ridiculous of them all? France was the most powerful and most feared European kingdom at the time. It was natural they start colonizing to exert influence against rivals abroad, when they had a coast and a navy, lest they end up like the truest useless empire (Austria and the HRE).

[anovikov]

Because they failed to either enrich themselves through robbing the colonies, or develop the colonies, or bring the culture there (ok people in Cote d'Ivoire indeed, eat baguettes and quiches but it looks more like a sad joke than like France).

Compare to the British colonies and dominions: brought British culture and legal system (even to territories where local population always dominated), developed them economically, and yes, robbed them too, making good profit.

French system, for comparison, was an utter failure. Only benefit it provided was a good network of anchorages and coal bunkers for the French Navy.