CMV: The true cost of Colonialism wasn't the goods stolen but the psychological damage done
I have a bit of a weird take on colonialism that I don't see discussed much.
Everyone focuses on the wealth extraction done by it.
You always hear of the $45 trillion taken from India. The resources stripped from Africa. And yes, that happened. But I genuinely don't think that's the deepest wound.
What colonialism really took was something harder to measure. When you spend generations destroying a society's institutions, replacing its intellectual class, training people to see their own culture as backward and inferior, you don't just take the gold. You take the belief that building anything is worth it. That what you create today will still be there tomorrow. That your own judgment about your own civilization can be trusted.
Economists call this social capital. I'd just call it the invisible confidence that makes societies function. It takes generations to build and can be gone in a fraction of that time.
Think about Japan after WW2 versus India after independence. Japan rebuilt remarkably fast. India has struggled despite 80 years of freedom. The difference wasn't intelligence or resources. Japan's national identity and institutional self belief survived the war largely intact. India's was systematically taken apart across generations of colonial rule.
The economic wounds heal eventually. The psychological ones go much deeper. That's what I think most people get wrong. The stolen money mattered less than what was done to the people's sense of themselves and their civilization. It's why Germany and Japan rebuilt easily, but India or Indonesia struggle (despite all 4 of these places having civilizational glory in the past)
I explain my argument in depth in this video(watch before arguing): https://youtu.be/b\_kktV1Nl7M
Would love to hear other perspectives on the topic! What do you think?