Economic exploitation
Definition
Economic exploitation refers to taking advantage of people's labor or resources in order to maximize profit without providing fair compensation or benefits. This can occur in colonial contexts when colonizers extract resources from colonized regions while paying low wages and exploiting local workers.
Analogy
Imagine a group project where one person does the majority of the work, but another person takes all the credit and rewards without acknowledging their effort.
Related terms
Mercantilism: An economic system prevalent during colonization that prioritized accumulating wealth through trade, often at the expense of colonies.
Plantation economy: A system in which large agricultural estates (plantations) produced a single cash crop using enslaved or indentured laborers.
Unequal exchange: A term used to describe an imbalanced relationship between countries or regions, where one side benefits more from economic transactions than the other.
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