Weren't they? Europeans certainly placed a high value on the land and resources controlled by native americans and went to extreme lengths (i.e. genocide and mass displacement) to get their hands on it.
If that's not plunder I don't know what is.
If that's not plunder I don't know what is.
Because I think its clear that the reason the rest of the Americas didnt become wealthy like North America is because of the same habit of plunder that made the US rich but instead of that wealth being sent to Boston or New York or wherever, it was sent back to Europe. How the oil rush in the US was primarily consumed domestically and enabled a huge buildup of industry or how the US has long had a strong domestic supply of steel those places either lacked key resources such as oil or steel while being rich in others or had their social and political structures destroyed by the legacy of colonialism. This combined with terrible governance shows us pretty clearly why the rest of the Americas didnt become rich like the US.
https://focus.bse.eu/colonial-settlers-economic-development-...
https://cod.pressbooks.pub/westernworlddailyreadingsgeograph...
https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/50/3/583/152678/The...
> these very good very smart very special White People™
There are many very poor countries run by white people. Any people can decide to become rich by deciding to become free market - like the Japanese after WW2, and Chinese in Hong Kong.
Japan and Hong Kong became very rich from free markets, and no natural resources. Mexico, S America, Africa, etc, are loaded with natural resources yet remain poor.
> terrible governance
Ding ding! A winner!
P.S. Spain never got rich by plundering S. America. That's because they conflated gold and silver with wealth. Real wealth is productive, skilled people using their talents to create things. All Spain got was inflation.
None of this changes the fact that much of the historical US national wealth can be see as plunder.
Not it’s not at all clear. They stopped shipping that plunder about at the same time as US became independent (+ 10-20 years). So both were on a comparable even footing in the early 1800s.
Also there was hardly any comparable “plunder” available to be shipped anywhere Boston or London. How many silver mines where there in NA prior to the 1800s?
The main advantages US/preceding colonies had over Latin America was a much nicer climate in the Northeast i(malaria and other diseases were a huge issue) and better geographic location which made trade with Europe easier.
There was no real plunder to speak of besides land. Which was of course a big deal because it mean that an average American was much more productive per capita even before industrialization began.
Productivity generally remained relatively low (most land was still farmed by the subjugated native populations), trade and commerce extremely restricted by the policies of the Spanish government and most of the surplus was shipped back to Europe.
In contrast in British North America the colonists got to keep pretty much all the wealth they generated.