Pfft, you think we invaded everyone for spices to eat them? Absolutely not. We did it so that we could sell them to the French, thereby making the French poorer by exploiting their degenerate addiction to food that tastes nice
Your comment made me wanna google the two economies and related stats. They’re a lot more Similar than I expected. Pretty cool. So I guess UK’s plan failed? xD unless France used to be richer.
While I was joking, of course, France’s economy actually was quite a lot more bigger and more powerful than the UK’s up until the industrial revolution and the about a century of everything going very badly for France. France was the most populous country in Europe by a wide margin, and back then that basically was the whole economy. It has quite a lot more land than the UK, and that land is a lot more productive too; the north of Wales and most of Scotland do not make for good farmland. Unlike Germany and Italy it united and centralised quite early, and it just outweighed Spain and the Low Countries the same way it did the UK, so for a long time France had the edge over all of its neighbours.
During the Napoleonic wars, France managed to raise forces that matched the UK, Prussia, Austria, and Spain combined in number. Some of that was due to other factors like how he organised it, but you’ve still got to have the people available somewhere if you want to match four major powers at once
Pfft, you think we invaded everyone for spices to eat them? Absolutely not. We did it so that we could sell them to the French, thereby making the French poorer by exploiting their degenerate addiction to food that tastes nice
Your comment made me wanna google the two economies and related stats. They’re a lot more Similar than I expected. Pretty cool. So I guess UK’s plan failed? xD unless France used to be richer.
While I was joking, of course, France’s economy actually was quite a lot more bigger and more powerful than the UK’s up until the industrial revolution and the about a century of everything going very badly for France. France was the most populous country in Europe by a wide margin, and back then that basically was the whole economy. It has quite a lot more land than the UK, and that land is a lot more productive too; the north of Wales and most of Scotland do not make for good farmland. Unlike Germany and Italy it united and centralised quite early, and it just outweighed Spain and the Low Countries the same way it did the UK, so for a long time France had the edge over all of its neighbours.
During the Napoleonic wars, France managed to raise forces that matched the UK, Prussia, Austria, and Spain combined in number. Some of that was due to other factors like how he organised it, but you’ve still got to have the people available somewhere if you want to match four major powers at once
That website is so neoliberal brained it makes me want to puke.
“Property Rights Index” “Investment Freedom Index”
What’s next? “Oppression of Working Classes Index”
All European colonial empires used to be richer.