Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Was China richer than Indonesia because of exploitation?
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Indonesia was more or less under Dutch rule for 300 years, ending in a 4-year war of indepence that ended in 1949.
China used to be an empire before it became a country, and that was no honorific. The Chinese rulers/emperors took over their neighbouring areas and exploited those. Europeans went overseas, but the dynamic is really no different. (It's actually why southern China started farming vast amounts of rice instead of their traditional diet of fruits and vegetables after they got conquered by the northern Chinese. Rice was much more convenient to store and transport up north.)
In China, a hundred years since the empire fell, the parts of China that were exploited are still extremely poor and underdeveloped in comparison to the parts that originally did the conquering.
So, quite the example. I really think you should stay away from teaching history to others.