Colonial Scientific Extraction: How the Global North Built Its Wealth on Southern Knowledge

This compelling piece delves into how the Global North—through colonial science—systematically appropriated the intellectual, botanical, agricultural, and technical knowledge of the Global South to amass wealth and dominate global systems.

1. Knowledge Theft as Economic Pillar

The article reveals that many of the modern economy’s foundational commodities—tobacco, sugar, rice, rum, spices—relied heavily on Indigenous and African knowledge. These communities developed crop cultivation, land management, and processing techniques over generations. Yet, European colonizers extracted this know-how without consent or credit, turning their wisdom into global profit .

2. Science in Service of Empire

Scientific disciplines—geology, botany, medicine—were harnessed as instruments of colonial control. Geological surveys unveiled coal, minerals, and fossil wealth in colonized lands; medicine ensured settlers’ safety in foreign climates; ethnographic studies justified domination by portraying locals as “primitive” .

3. Environmental and Human Costs

The relentless extraction benefited imperial centers while devastating colonial environments and communities. Intensive mining, deforestation, monoculture plantations, and exploitative labor systems inflicted long-term ecological damage and human suffering .

4. Epistemic Invisibility and Today’s Legacy

Colonial powers not only appropriated knowledge—they erased its origins, embedding Western science as the universal standard. Indigenous and African scholars were excluded from credit, their contributions sidelined. This epistemic erasure continues to skew narratives of scientific progress and global development .

🔗 For full details, read the original article here: colonial-scientific-extraction-how-the-global-north-built-its-wealth-on-southern-knowledge/