Jean-Paul Sartre writes in his book ‘Colonialism and Neocolonialism’:

“You know very well that we are exploiters. You know very well that we took the gold and the metals and then the oil of the ‘new continents’ and brought them back to the old mother countries. Not without excellent results: palaces, cathedrals, industrial capitals; and then whenever crisis threatened, the colonial markets were there to cushion or deflect it. Europe, stuffed with riches, granted de jure humanity to all its inhabitants: for us, a human being means ‘accomplice’, since we have all benefited from colonial exploitation... What empty chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, country and who knows what else?”