His words (from The Wretched of the Earth):
"From all these continents, under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries toward that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood and exotic products. Europe is literally the creation of the third world. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the under-developed peoples.
The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialised in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hand on his heart that he must come to the aid of the poor under-developed peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves: 'It’s a just reparation which will be paid to us.'"
There is a popular sociological model (often adopted by historians and anthropologists) called World Systems Theory that tries to explain the rise of the capitalist world system and how it came to favor certain countries over others. The central part of this model is that a set of "core" nations (like the U.K. or France) use their relative position of power to a set of "periphery" nations (say colonies or colonized nations) to maintain with the "periphery" an unequal exchange.
This unequal exchange is "the systematic transfer of surplus from semi-proletarian sectors in the periphery to the high-technology, industrialized core (Goldfrank 2000)". In other words, the industrial development of the "core" is fueled by the extractive relationships between the "periphery" and "core". Likewise, the continued underdevelopment of the "periphery" is an intentional end result of domination by the "core". This "development of underdevelopment" is intended to maintain the unequal exchange between core and periphery, and therefore maintain the position of wealth and power the core occupies.
As always, it is more complicated than just one factor contributing to the wealth of Europe, but the central thesis is sound, that the development and industrialization of Europe was very much enabled by a extractive relationship with their colonies.
Can someone address the more direct claim about Liverpool/Bordeaux/Holland and the role of the slave trade in the enrichment of those areas and Europe? I feel that an answer hasn't been attempted yet despite the amount of discussion.
Also reading the quotes section of The Wrestched of the Earth it seems there is a lot of extraordinary claims about colonialism that seem almost entirely about ideology/narrative and that its either not actually claiming to have historical legitimacy or just doesn't have it.
My Western Civ professor stated that colonies were more of a display of power and actually not that profitable. Colonies had to be dropped to make up for economic issues because maintaining them was so expensive.
Can someone confirm that? I sold my textbook back to my university.
What about russia?