There’s very less evidence to support that. I can only recall one incident where a blanket infected with small pox was handed out to a tribe and the officer who did that was later severely reprimanded.
But anyhow, I am not trying to downplay the ill intent of European settlers, I will just quote this here “history is written by victors”. The blanket incident is all I recall about deliberate disease spreading. who really knows? How many hundreds of such incidents went unreported?
When you think about it, it really did change the world for almost a century. It lead to ww1 which sowed the seeds for ww2 and when that came to end, communism had been strengthened enough by stalin capatalizing under the pretence of a nazi free Europe.
Unpopular opinion: it’s more of a coping mechanism for the third world countries.
Sure UK and much of Europe had big and terrible colonies but there were still many like sweden and norway which did not. Thus the assertion that developed countries all have built upon exploitation is not entirely true
Assertion 2: countries such as china have shown that economic development is possible when you have a terrible history of war, destruction or otherwise poor economic background. Sure personal freedom is a joke in China but to say it isn’t an economic giant is false. Poland after ww2 is another example, much of their intellects were killed and warsaw was everything but ruins at the end of 1945
Assertion 3: geography, the age groups of the people and culture all affect the development of a nation much more than their history from 80 years ago.
from someone who has keen interest in history and lives in a third world country and seen corruption, bribery and every form of idiotic economic decision that a government can make to not let the country be a better place.