Why Are Some Countries Rich and Others Poor?

Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"?

How many years does it take for the benefits of slavery to disappear? I think it's far longer than you do.

British slavery meant more income to the government, which lead to a better navy, which lead to the ability to defend the triangle trade. A better navy helped advance British imperialism. How might Trafalgar have turned out with a weaker British navy?

British control of sugar production was built on slavery. But even once the slaves were free in a legal sense, the black population of ex-slaves was still at the bottom of the social ladder. The white landowners kept political and economic control for generations, and the profits went to Britain.

In the US, institutionalized racism, not just in localized Jim Crow laws and sundown towns, but also in federal policies like redlining, prevented generations of blacks from getting the same economic benefits as whites. (See Richard Rothstein's “The Color of Law”; interview at http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-... .) I know less about British history, but I do know how many thought the "Anglo-Saxon race" was above all others.

You earlier wrote: "Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on slave labour."

I don't think you appreciate the full impact of slavery on the US or British economies. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#A... :

> slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking, shipping and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port cities in the North. The northern textile mills in New York and New England processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822 half of New York City's exports were related to cotton

and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History

> By 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, cotton accounted for almost 60% of American exports, representing a total value of nearly $200 million a year.

Even though slavery was banned in the British Empire, Britain still profited from slave labor carried out elsewhere. The cotton mills of Lancashire produced a huge fraction of the world's processed cotton. You know where that cotton came from? The forced labor of American slaves.

Quoting now from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine :

> When the slave-owning Southern States of America demanded secession from the United States of America and declared war in 1861, the cotton supply was interrupted at first by a Southern imposed boycott and then a Union blockade. The South's thinking was that it could force British support through an economic boycott. ... Of the 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton 1,115,890,608 lb came from America.(80 %) ... Confederate flags were flown in many cotton towns.

Britain's economy profited from American slavery even until the 1860s, and they knew it.

Well in the USA you can thank the Democrats for that: the 13th Amendment, banning slavery, was passed with 100% Republican support and only 23% Democrat support :-)

Kind of ironic to hear the Democrats wringing their hands now out of "compassion" for the oppressed people...

> Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"?

Yes, I do. I concede that you have demonstrated that economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue to the UK economy until the 19th century. However, it is simply not true to flatly claim, as did the OP, that "Most rich countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor (slavery)".

The Netherlands. Quoting from http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/book-reviews/1...

> The Dutch role in the slave trade is said to be minor, but Kwame Nimako shows that although the Dutch colonies in the Americas might have been few and small compared to the Spanish, Portuguese and British colonies, the Dutch were, because of their well-built vessels and good seamanship, very active in the actual transport of slaves both for their own colonies and for others. Between 1600-1650 the Netherlands replaced Britain as the second major transatlantic transporter ...

> The state was very much involved in the slave trade: brokerage and pilot fees were required by the state, gifts to rulers were sometimes required, permits had to be purchased and agreements with other enslaving nations were made. There was government protection of sugar refining between 1650-1680 (p.73). The slave ships required a crew twice the size of a normal commercial ship, since ‘unwilling passengers’ might revolt. The transportation of slaves was never a normal business but needed state support. ‘The treaties that shaped the formation of some of the major European states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were tied to control of or negation about the Atlantic slave trade, annexation and colonisation of other people’s land and subjugation of other people’ ...

> The Dutch colonies of Suriname and the Dutch Antilles had their complement of slaves, though these were fewer in number than in the British colonies. ...

> Unlike Britain, in Holland there was no movement for the abolition of slavery. The Dutch ignored the 1794 French declaration of liberty for slaves, even though they adopted many French laws when under French control in the Napoleonic period. ...

> Nimako shows that, contrary to supposition, the Dutch still found slavery profitable at the time of abolition, since they deferred the latter until after the produce had been harvested. Further, the slave-owners wanted compensation for the loss of their slaves after abolition. The enslavers were compensated, but the former slaves received nothing, not even the much smaller amount they were supposed to receive. In fact the compensation granted to the enslavers came from the enslaved and most went not to the colonies but to slave owners living in the Netherlands

I note that the examples that you cite above are all nations that were relatively wealthy to begin with. They did not suddenly lift themselves out of poverty in the 17th century by enslaving Africans. Rather, their advanced technology and capital resources enabled them to dominate and exploit other populations, either through slave trading or colonisation. In doing this, they did further enrich themselves, true, but to state that this shameful period is actually the wellspring from which these nations' wealth derives in the 21st century is dramatic overreach.