I will leave it to others to answer the broader question of to what extent was the great divergence between Europe and the rest driven by imperialism and slavery. However, I can make a few points about how Europeans who did not hold formal colonial holdings benefitted indirectly from imperial adventures overseas. I will focus on Germany and give some examples of the ways in which the “motors of change” in the 19th century as Chris Bayly has termed them operated on Germany just as much as they did on Britain and France.

You are correct that for most of the 18th and 19th centuries Germany didn’t have colonial empire outside Europe. Indeed, Germany didn’t exist. Germany did, however, have a large textile industry based for the most part along the Rhine river. In the early 19th century the main source of cotton for this burgeoning business came, you guessed it, from the Southern United States using slave based labour. It is impossible to extricate any European textile industry in the 19th century from some form of imperial domination. You will note that I said empire outside of Europe, this is because Germany, or rather Prussia, did have an empire and a population of subjected people in the form of the Poles in Prussia. Many worked in truly horrendous conditions on the great sugar beet plantations of Prussia, were subjected to severe racial discrimination by the German authorities. While these people were not slaves, they suffered from a significant degree of “unfreedom” and a form of labour discipline intended to subject them and extract cheap labour. Indeed, when the Germans acquired an empire of their own, they applied the lessons which they learned in Prussia to Togo, along with some know how from the American South, to generate a cotton industry. If you want to learn more about this fascinating colonial experiment I’d urge you to check out Andrew Zimmerman’s Alabama in Africa which explores the topic extensively.

Further, Germans didn’t need to participate directly in imperialism and slavery to benefit from the opening of non-European markets to European goods. Cheap British cloth, Haitian Sugar and Carolina rice helped to fuel German economic growth in the 19th century just as much as it did in Britain. The Germans did not take the lead in this process, but they nevertheless benefitted from a political and economic climate which sought unfettered access to foreign markets and supplies of raw materials.

Finally, the argument for the great divergence is, at least to some extent, one about labour scarcity. Powering things with coal, although in the long run much more efficient, is at the beginning very expensive indeed. If there are plenty of available people, then there is no reason to do it. In Britain, partially due to migration, there was a severe labour shortage which made it worthwhile to figure out how to harness steam power to drive looms. For the German case, there are a few things to note. The Germans came late to industrialisation – behind the British and the Belgians – and as such had the advantage of not being the first adopters as it were. German industrialisation therefore, indirectly benefitted from a set of imperial territories over which they had no control. Secondly, although someone else will have to make a more concrete argument on this score, there was extensive migration out of Germany, possibly making the adoption of new technologies easier. The USA for instance, saw the migration of over 7 million Germans in the 19th century. Such migration was enabled, frankly, by genocide and forced relocation which cleared American Indians off their land and allowed for the settlement of these “virgin territories” by German settlers. There would, for instance, have been no settlement of the Dakotas without the destruction of the Dakota tribe and their removal to Oklahoma in 1862.

I am in no way suggesting that imperialism and the forms of labour extraction which came along with it were solely responsible for German industrialisation in the 19th century. Germany had many things going for it, such as extensive coal and steel deposits, a large well-educated populace which spoke a common language and many other factors. However, such factors must be looked at in the round alongside the other great forces which drove the 19th century. Sadly, those forces included imperialism and understandings of race which placed people into hierarchies which assigned white Europeans prime position. It’s our duty as historians to try and look at such things in the round