To be fair- they all were and are like that, back then and now. It just that the industrialization dividend created a cultural power asymmetry which made those nightmares a permanently one sided affair for a while.
They also weren't all the same. Not everyone goes around enslaving people and using their life to seek riches and fame. I don't think anyone complains about historical figures who, flaws and all, fought for higher ideals like personal liberty.
They are just characters, surfing the waves of technological change and resulting cultural power asymmetries. They are surprisingly irrelevant and replaceable. But they are the representatives of cultural deficiencies, propelled onwards by geography and circumstances into moments of clarity, where one party is thrown into a "catchup" race at all costs to prevent the other from overtaking it now or later.