What would you call Rand then? I referred to Rand as a philosopher because that is what wikipedia did. Ayn Rand just isn't that much on my radar that I care to formulate an entirely unique perspective on who she is and was. I am okay with letting the mainstream decide for me.
My interest isn't so much in how Rand should be categorized but in the ideas she made popular. I would not have cared about her if not for the abundance of libertarian minded people who seem obsessed with her ideas.
Sure political and military histories matter, but those are secondary effects. You got to look at the story behind the story. Why was one country able to dominate militarily another, or why was one country ill equipped to defend itself? Was it random occurrences or deeper reasons?
It is much easier to exploit a politically and socially divided poor country than a unified and rich country. Take Norway's discovery of oil. The US certainly tried to manipulate Norway as it has done with so many other countries. American business tried to take ownership over all the oil and get very favorable deals. We have seen how that has played out numerous times. But it is very hard for a foreign entity to achieve that when dealing with politicians in a country with very low corruption, high levels of transparency and a political leadership that doesn't care all that much about personal wealth in the first place. In particular if the country is already quite wealthy and with strong political institutions.
American exploitation of poorer countries have always relied on exploiting countries with weak institutions and with significant corruption problems. Hence to get the story behind the story you have to also look at why did the country end up that way. That leads one back to Spain which itself had weak institutions and corruption. The fact that South American countries where all founded on very exploitative systems with an elite abusing and exploiting a large poor underclass. No rule of law but the rule of men.
The legacy of Spain, colonization, racism all into one crazy mix doomed many South American countries to easily become puppets by new great powers manipulating them.
I don't believe I ever attributed European prosperity to the idea of colonization or to military resources. I was attributing it mainly to climate and geography that created favorable environments for development. Those environment of course in turn created European naval supremacy which laid the foundation for later European colonial exploits.
If you do not develop into a superior navel power you could not become a world wide colonizer either. Hence the seed of European power must always be traced back to whatever conditions laid the foundation for seapower.
You could argue for instance that I never said a word about British benefit from conquering India. But the point of my story is to go behind that fact and ask: Why was Britain ever put in a position to be able to conquer India in the first place? The answer to that question is quite generic: All European powers in Asia who dominated did so through the use of superior sea power and fort building techniques.
European powers, including Britain, could establish footholds far away from their own shores because they built forts better than anybody else. Very few European forts ever got conquered even with superior manpower and firepower.
Britain excelled over other European nations because it was an island. As an island Britain could keep spending on a land army to a minimum and pour all their resources into the navy. And the navy is what allowed Britain to conquer all over the globe.
All they needed was a foothold and commercial enterprise to pay for for soldiers and weapons. They had that. India was not conquered by English soldiers but Indian soldiers. The British East Indian company built the largest army in the world made up almost exclusively by Indians. Their commercial enterprise allowed them to pay for that. Using more advanced European tactics and weapons allowed Britain to use "their" Indians to defeat the "other" Indians.
Unlike so many conquerors in the past Britain could afford to screw up as many times as they liked, because the ones they attacked had no means to come back and attack their homeland. Rome was nearly destroy by Carthage, but India could never send any Elephants into Britain and threaten them.
It was like playing a soccer match where Britain got to kick endless number of shots against the Indian goal but India was never allowed to attempt to kick the ball into the British goal. The same could be said about almost any other country colonized. Rinse repeat.
