The Global North didn’t get rich through fair trade — it got rich through colonial transfers, coerced labor, and rigged price
🚨 Global South scholars have said it for decades — now influential economists Thomas Piketty confirms it with 225 years of data:
In a brilliant new paper with Gastón Nievas, Piketty traces 225 years of global trade, finance, and foreign wealth to show what many have long known:
👉🏽 What we call “development” is often just unequal exchange.
💥 The Global North didn’t get rich through fair trade — it got rich through colonial transfers, coerced labor, and rigged prices.
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🔍 Key findings:
1️⃣ Colonial extraction powered Europe’s rise.
From 1800–1914, Europe ran persistent trade deficits — but still accumulated over 30% of global GDP in foreign wealth.
How? Through tribute payments, forced tax transfers, and income from colonial holdings.
2️⃣ Today’s economy runs on the same logic.
East Asia (esp. China, Japan) now plays the surplus game.
The U.S. runs massive deficits, financed by financial hegemony.
Meanwhile, the Global South continues to export cheap raw materials, often produced via forced labor and unsustainable debt.
3️⃣ Invisible flows distort the story.
Colonial powers got rich not by exporting more, but by extracting more — through services, profits, and interest from the periphery.
4️⃣ It didn’t have to be this way.
A 20% rise in commodity prices in the 19th century would have reversed the flow of wealth, turning Africa, Asia, and Latin America into creditors — and Europe into a debtor.
5️⃣ Colonial drain > modern aid.
India’s transfers to Britain. Haiti’s debt to France.
These weren’t small injustices — they were global-scale theft, still unpaid.
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📣 The authors call for bold structural change:
✅ A global clearing union
✅ A tax on excessive trade surpluses
✅ IMF reform that puts real power in the hands of the Global South
💡 The most striking insight?
Small shifts in trade rules or prices could have created real convergence.
But we didn’t let it happen. Because the system wasn’t broken —
it was designed like this.
Unequal exchange, colonial extraction, debt traps, and forced labor aren’t historical anomalies. They’re built into the architecture of trade, finance, and global governance.
Markets didn’t fix it.
Growth didn’t fix it.
“Development” didn’t fix it.
Because the system was never designed to correct — only to extract.
Until we confront that, inequality isn’t a bug. It’s the business model.
Now we have the data.
And no more excuses.
The graphic is an adaption of the amazing illustrator polyp.org.uk - the adaption was approved by illustrator. Check out his work here - https://polyp.org.uk | 280 comments on LinkedIn
The Global North didn’t get rich through fair trade — it got rich through colonial transfers, coerced labor, and rigged price
