Compare Netherlands and China. China had vast resources: territory, minerals etc, while Netherlands was a comparatively minute country with very few resources.
Yet, during much of the Age of Exploration, Netherlands had colonies over the world and was a major economic power (to the best of my knowledge). Yet, China was both technologically, politically and economically dominated by colonial powers.
The same can be said about Great Britain, Spanish Empire etc.
An interesting theory has been put forth by Charles Tilly in his book Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. This does not deal with the colonization issue you're referring to, but it does deal with the question 'How do such disparate countries gain power?'.
For Tilly, there are two extremes to gaining power. One way is trough coercion. By controlling the food supply and strategic positions (castles). This of course also involves having armed men and controlling weapon production, so you can keep controlling the food supply and strategic positions. Once you have a little power this way, you can keep expanding it (at the costs of others). Prime examples of this path to power are the Eastern European states in the Middle Ages, with large swathes of land and relatively small economies.
The other way of gaining power is through capital. If you have a good economy and a large amount of money, you don't really need to control everything. Of course one or two strategic positions to defend are nice to have, but other than that you simply buy your armed men and weapons. You use those to gain more capital, and buy more armed men and weapons. Prime examples are the Dutch Republic and the Italian city-states.
Now not all states were at an extreme. If you have a line with coercion on the left end and capital on the right end, Spain (Castile) would be somewhat left of the middle, France would be bang in the middle (coercion and capital being equally important), and England would be somewhat to the right.
To answer your question: a state can either control resources directly (coercion) or it can pay for controlling them (note that doesn't mean buy them, but rather pay someone else to control the resources). That's what many colonial powers did: pay locals to fight other locals, then extract the resources.
Source:
C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992, 2nd edition, Oxford 1992
It is interesting that you brought up Netherlands, Spain, and GB. All three of these nations gained power (and losing power) not by economic wealth of the mainland but by having(or losing) their navies. The ability to project power, be it economic or military, by use of a navy allowed all three of these nations to rise considerably. GB is famous for it, but Spain, and the Netherlands for a time had larger navies then GB had and they where able to project their power using them.
Not coincidentally that's why all three nations had contentious relations between each other. The English and the dutch fought each other the English and the Spanish fought each other, and the Spanish and the dutch fought each other.
Naval power was and debatable still is the primary way of projecting power.