Roots

[katarn]

True. The growth of the 'developing' world is really more a case of a few powers advancing much more than the rest of the world did in the same time.

Right. Now ask yourself why those select countries grew so very much faster than the others.

India and China one to mind. I'm not sure if you are suggesting. The countries that comes to mind are Japan, India, and China, which have all used the tactic of de facto reverse merchantilism aften with the active assistance of the governments of countries that colonized them. Interesting.

Because they invented industry, and other countries that didn't typically acted as exporters of raw materials. The issue with the export economy is that the goods exported tended to be cash crops or similar things, so there was no wage earning worker class, only (for a while) slave laborers and nearly such, creating conditions where a thriving local economy couldn't exist like it did in Europe and the industrialized countries because they weren't manufacturing anything and their people hadn't the money to pay for any of that anyway.