SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: The argument is not: Europe was weak and mysteriously won. The argument is: European power projection and colonial extraction were not separate phenomena

https://x.com/nxt888/status/2053167074990850538

"The idea that Europe was poor but was able to project power in far-flung places magically is an overcorrection against Eurocentrism."

Nobody said Europe was poor. Nobody said the power projection was magic.

That is a strawman so large it has its own postcode.

The argument is not: Europe was weak and mysteriously won.

The argument is: European power projection and colonial extraction were not separate phenomena where one preceded and enabled the other.

They were the same phenomenon, compounding over time, each round of extraction funding the next round of projection.

The Spanish extracted silver from the Americas using enslaved Indigenous labor. That silver funded Spanish military capacity in Europe and naval capacity globally. That naval capacity enabled more extraction. That extraction funded more capacity.

The British taxed Bengal immediately after Plassey. The Bengal revenues funded Company military expansion into the rest of India. The rest of India's revenues funded the next expansion.

By the time the Crown took over from the Company in 1858, the entire Indian subcontinent was being governed and its military maintained largely at Indian expense, for British benefit.

This is not magic.

This is compound interest on conquest.

"Europe had surplus capacity" is the end of this process, not its independent origin.