As a grad student in Classics, I encountered a Ghanaian (who came to Boston to study Latin) who said that Ghana was very fertile and resource-rich, so the Brits (who were the strongest at the time) chose it for themselves, leaving the French all the scraps in between. ("People come to Ghana from all over to buy supplies. Togo?!", he laughed, "in Togo there is nothing!", which I didn't quite know how to respond to.)
If you assume that it's just British rule, that assumes that it's random.
> If you assume that it's just British rule, that assumes that it's random.
That is a very insightful point. That single sentence severely weakens grandparent's argument -- the un-stated assumption that the British rolled a die, and randomly picked among a set of uniformly desolate and completely undeveloped countries in order to colonize them.
If you assume that it's just British rule, that assumes that it's random.