[coldtea]

>Pretty sure all of the former colonies are independent nations by now, and have been for more than a generation.

Yes. And if someone breaks your legs, you should totally be able to run a marathon after, say, 15 years. After all, they haven't broke your legs for a while.

History and national development doesn't work like that. A major handicap can still keep you back for centuries.

It's even more than a handicap relatively too. It's not just that you were held down (and the other side neutral): the handicap for you was at the same time an enrichment off your back for the other side.

Even more more so, since "independent nations" is mostly a facade for the busines as usual, of neocolonialism: the same shit, but somewhat more convert (bribing politicians, setting up banana-republic conditions, if needed bringing in the army, supporting this or that dictator into power, and so on, and using monetary policy and foreign aid to make sure they never stand on their legs).

[usrbinbash]

Yeah, I'm not gonna discuss colonialism here. Multiple generations are a long time to get things in order. Many countries rebuilt from scratch into powerful industrialized nations within decades after major wars.

And it's also not the topic of the discussion tbh. This is about the impact of the Mercator projection, and unless I get to see a peer reviewed study convincing me otherwise, my point stands.