Developments such as these fuelled the Great Divergence – the shift by which the western world caught up with, overtook and dominated vast parts of the world. To most Europeans, this was a story of entitlement as much as one of enlightenment, a natural outcome of inherent sophistication and progress which those living in other parts of the world could not and never would match, a result even of racial superiority. Underpinning all these ideas, however, were the cold realities of resource exploitation, of the creation and improvement of supply chains and of turning blind eyes to abuses, of not
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