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Another terrible catastrophe was the colonisation of India, resulting ultimately in it's economic destruction, massive famines of millions of people etc. In fact a great catastrophe the western colonisation of the rest of the world starting from about 1497 in general. It was extraordinarily brutal throughout the world. For an excellent overview of this history of European colonisation of the world see Noam Chomsky's book "Year 501, The Conquest Continues". It's available online.

But the black death was obviously a major global catastrophe. In fact Europe was for centuries a most brutal place with disease, warfare, and oppression.



> In fact Europe was for centuries a most brutal place with disease, warfare, and oppression.

I'm not sure that only applies to Europe...


Of course not. Comparatively it was actually pretty bad. Worse than I thought it was, the gap between the first world and the third world was also much smaller in the past.




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