Author: vertical and horizontal source: planting flower city (id:hqsycn)
In the past 500 years, the West has enjoyed boundless scenery. They have gradually changed from a backward country to the strongest in the world, and have maintained this wealth and strength until now.
The West’s own explanation of this is that its own system is good, with advanced rights and interests such as democracy, human rights, freedom and fraternity, which has created the prosperity and strength of the West.
Obviously, this is bullshit. It is a false “success theory” advocated by the west after its own success, which not only deceives others, but also whitewashes itself.
So, what is the foundation and root of Western prosperity?
In this regard, the author has always adhered to his own
“Syllogism” thought
That is, the West plundered enormous wealth from the world through direct violent plundering during the great navigation period, dumping industrial products to the colonies during the industrialization period, and now by promoting globalization and controlling the top of the industrial chain (high technology), thus creating their long-standing prosperity and strength.
1? Violent plunder during the Great Voyage
How much wealth has the West plundered? Let’s look at some data:
Portugal:
From 1493 to 1600, 276 tons of gold were looted from Africa alone;
During the 300 years of ruling Brazil, Portugal plundered 1000 tons of gold and 300 million dollars of diamonds.
Spain:
From the 16th to 19th centuries, about 2.5 million kilograms of gold and 100million kilograms of silver were obtained from the Americas;
From 1521 to 1600, Spain plundered 200000 kilograms of gold and 18million kilograms of silver from the Americas;
britain:
According to records, between 1757 and 1815, the British East India Company seized 1billion pounds of wealth from India (7.32 grams of gold per pound).
There is a saying that during the 200 years of British rule in India, the wealth plundered from India was as much as $54trillion, reaching an average of $270billion per year. This statement is worth textual research, but Britain must have gained a lot of wealth through India.
In addition to the above plundering methods, Western plunder also includes the following:
Pirate plunder:
The West pursues a pirate culture and is proud of plunder. The British royal family not only issues “privation licenses” to pirates, legalizes robbery, and even encourages and funds pirates’ plunder. The most famous is that Queen Elizabeth funded the legendary pirate Drake.
Drake’s battle for fame was the battle of the “kakafogo” on March 3, 1579. On that day, it successfully looted the “kakafogo” and obtained 80 pounds of gold, 20 tons of silver, 13 boxes of silver coins, and several boxes of pearls and gems. It took Drake and his associates four days to load all the booty on board.
In this war, Drake became a hero. When he sailed into Plymouth port loaded with treasure on September 26, 1580, he was ceremoniously welcomed by the British people. Queen Elizabeth boarded Drake’s flagship “golden deer”, conferred Drake knighthood, and made the robber mayor of Plymouth.
War reparations:
Take the Opium War against China as an example, the Western powers received more than 1.3 billion taels of silver from China. Only in 1895, the Sino Japanese War, the compensation Kuping silver 231.5 million Liang; In 1901, Boxer Indemnity reached 450 million taels of silver.
Slave trade:
From 1621 to 1734, the West India Company sold 460000 slaves in total, including those from other countries. Behind the dehumanizing way is the “blood money” earned by western countries.
Plunder resources:
Plunder ivory, precious stones and pearls from Africa, jewelry, opium, rice, sugar, silk and cotton fabrics from India, and spices from Southeast Asia… Finally, they are shipped to Europe for high prices.
Crushing labor force:
By forcing slaves (such as black slaves and Chinese workers) to work, they squeeze manpower and get a lot of returns. For example, establish slave plantations in Brazil to produce sugar, coffee and tobacco; For example, Indians were forced to work in plantations and livestock farms and engage in hard labor in the mining of gold and silver deposits.
For example, the bones of a Chinese laborer are buried under each track of the Western Railway in the United States; The reason why Stanford wanted to build a university was that this family had killed many people when building the Western Railway in the United States, and their hands were stained with the blood of Chinese workers.
Plunder cultural relics of other countries:
There is no way to calculate the price of the cultural relics of other countries they robbed. The cultural relics of other countries displayed in the Western Museum still benefit the West. For example, if you have nothing to do, you can take two Yuanmingyuan animal heads and auction them. The one-time income is millions or tens of millions of euros.
It can be seen from the above that the western countries have plundered a huge amount of world wealth through violent means. These data are only the tip of the iceberg of the wealth they have plundered. In fact, there are far more data than here.
2? Dumping industrial products to the colonies and plundering wealth
There is no way to show their plunder gains through quantitative data, but we can see one or two from some side data.
By 1800, Britain had a colonial area of 11.3 million square kilometers, which shows how much profit it can make from this broad market.
Since 1800, Britain’s income from dumping opium on China through the East India Company alone has amounted to 400million silver dollars.
There is another point, which can also reflect the wealth they obtained through the colonies, that is, war.
In history, the West fought many large wars for colonies, such as the Spanish American war, the seven-year war, the British French war, and so on. One of the representative works and the peak of the colonial struggle is World War I and World War II.
In the first World War, 33 countries participated in the war, more than 70million troops were invested, 1.5 billion people were involved in the war, more than 10 million people were killed, 20million people were injured, the number of civilian deaths reached 6493000, and the economic losses caused by the War reached 270billion US dollars;
In the Second World War, more than 60 countries and regions and more than 2billion people were involved in the war.
The number of troops participating in the war is about 22million in the Soviet Union, 14million in the United States, 12million in Britain, 17million in Germany and 7million in Japan; The death toll exceeded 70million and about 130million people were injured; The economic losses reached more than $500 billion.
World War I and World War II are usually said to be anti fascist wars, but that’s what textbooks tell you. In fact, it’s an imperialist war. It’s a colonial war in which emerging countries demand to re divide their spheres of influence. It doesn’t matter whether it’s just or unjust. However, later, Germany and Japan carried out indiscriminate attacks on civilians (massacre of civilians). In order to occupy the moral highland and enjoy the fruits of victory after World War II, the Allies defined it as the world anti fascist war.
In order to compete for colonies, the investment in World War I and World War II was so huge, the casualties were so heavy, and the economic losses were so high. This shows that countries attach importance to colonies, how much benefits they can obtain, and no one will invest heavily for petty profits.
3? Scientific and technological plunder
We are more familiar with this point.
The West plundered the world by promoting globalization, controlling high technology and occupying the top of the global industrial chain.
For example, the cost of a fruit mobile phone is only more than 1000 yuan, but the OEM enterprise can only earn a few dollars for the hardest work, while the fruit company takes it and pastes a label, and it can sell for sixorseven thousand yuan immediately.
For example, when some chips are not produced in other countries, a chip sells for hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars. As soon as other countries come out, they immediately reduce the price to one or two hundred dollars, tens of dollars or even a few dollars.
For example, in the early years, China worked hard to produce 800million shirts to replace an Airbus A380.
In the past, when Huawei did not get the telecom switch out, it bought one from Germany, and charged 3000 yuan directly for an iron accessory. What, is it expensive? Whether you like to buy it or not, it’s the price. Every time something goes wrong, it can only be repaired by German engineers. The Chinese side will pay for the accommodation and travel expenses, and the Chinese personnel are not allowed to be present during the maintenance. Finally, the German engineer took a free trip and went home with more than 100000 dollars of maintenance expenses… How did the high welfare life of Westerners come about? That’s how it came about.
When China made its own telecommunications equipment, the western countries directly offered cabbage prices, originally 3000 pieces of iron, directly for free.
There are also high-speed railways, shield machines, supercomputing and many other things. When they are exclusively controlled by the west, their selling prices are often many times higher than normal profits. This is not what you can buy if you want.
By occupying the top of the industrial chain, the west only distributed meager profits to the middle and lower reaches, taking most of its own interests, so as to grab global wealth and enrich itself.
? video screenshot of 2022-g7 Summit
In addition to science and technology, the West also reaps the world through financial and other means.
The reason why the West will fight Iraq is that Saddam intends to give up petrodollars and plan to settle in euros. The United States killed him for any reason; Gaddafi was more ruthless. He didn’t even use the euro. He directly linked oil to gold, so he didn’t need the United States to do it. Those American brothers in Europe rushed up and bit Libya to pieces; The reason why the West vigorously besieged Russia is that Putin nationalized energy sovereignty and is promoting “de dollarization”.
From the above introduction, we can draw a conclusion:
The foundation of Western affluence is that they control more global resources; The reason why the west is prosperous and powerful is that they plunder more global wealth.
Many problems can be attributed to economic problems. If the West controls more global resources and plunders more world wealth, it will naturally be rich. The plundering of wealth, the control of resources and colonies provided the key conditions for western industrialization, that is, the primitive accumulation of capital, means of production and markets, which made them take the lead in completing industrialization; On this basis, the West further realized the scientization, controlled high technology and continued to plunder the world. The West has achieved its own step-by-step lead. Combined with the predatory means of science and technology tax and Seigniorage, it is difficult to be prosperous and powerful.
Postscript:
Understand these, you will understand what the source of Western power is, which is not the capitalist system, democracy, human rights, freedom that the West preaches at all; It also explains why the west is full of anxiety, why there are various problems in the West today (racial confrontation, black-and-white confrontation, the rise of the far right, the prevalence of protectionism, anti globalization, etc.), why the West should exert all its efforts to suppress emerging countries such as China and Russia, and why it should engage in scientific and technological war against China… The essence is that with the rise of emerging countries, they can control less and less global resources, and emerging countries are in the field of science and technology The catch-up in finance and other directions makes their first mover advantage smaller and smaller. The world wealth they can plunder by their last means of plunder (technology, finance, etc.) is declining rapidly. Do you say they are in a hurry? It must be hysteria!