[BurningFrog]

You're implying that the colonial powers got rich by taking natural resources from Africa and forcing Africans to work without pay.

Since you don't offer any evidence for this scenario, I can't really refute it :)

But note that 90% of Africa didn't even get colonized before 1884. That was over a century into the Industrial Revolution era, during which Western Europe had roughly doubled it's population and tripled their GDP.

[oa335]

> You're implying that the colonial powers got rich by taking natural resources from Africa and forcing Africans to work without pay.

I don't interpret the OP comment as restricted to Africa - e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda in Spanish colonies.