Open veins
After Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (1971)
The same few ways of taking wealth turn up again and again, in many places and over hundreds of years, and some are still running. Start with a place, a method or a period, and each case will suggest where to go next.
Every story: 24 stories
Caribbean
Caribbean · 1825–1947Haiti pays for its own freedomFrance made Haiti pay its former slave-owners for the independence it had already won, and French banks lent it the money to do so.
Caribbean · 1833–2015Britain buys out the slave-ownersWhen Britain ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, Parliament borrowed to pay the owners, and the people they had enslaved got nothing.
Caribbean · 2025Jamaica after Hurricane MelissaHurricane Melissa did damage equal to 41% of Jamaica's yearly output, and its insurance covered a small part of it.
Africa
Africa · 1830–1962Algeria's land, by paperworkFrance moved Algerian land to European settlers through property-title laws, and has never apologised for the colonial period.
Africa · 1885–1908King Leopold's rubberKing Leopold II ran the Congo as his own business, and his rubber quotas were enforced by terror.
Africa · 1945–todayThe CFA franc, a currency kept in ParisFourteen African states' money was tied to the French franc, then the euro, and for decades part of their reserves had to be kept in Paris.
Africa · 1950s–2013Kenya's camps and the files Britain hidBritain took Kenyan land for settlers' coffee and tea farms, held thousands in camps in the 1950s, and in 2013 settled with the survivors.
Africa · 2017–todayThe cobalt in your batteryChildren have been found digging cobalt by hand in Congo for the batteries in phones and electric cars, and the country now fights to keep more of the metal's value.
Africa · 2020–todayZambia's debt, under English lawWhen Zambia could not pay its debts, the private bondholders, protected by English law, came out ahead of the governments that had lent to it.
Africa · 2020sNurses trained in Africa, working in BritainBritain's health service recruits nurses trained in countries the WHO says are short of them, while its health aid to those same countries falls.
The Americas
The Americas · 1550–1888Brazil, the last to end slaveryMore enslaved Africans were brought to Brazil than to any other country in the Americas, and Brazil was the last of them to abolish slavery, in 1888.
The Americas · 1570s–1800sPotosí, the silver mountainUnder Spanish rule, Indigenous men were drafted in turns to dig silver at Potosí and mercury at Huancavelica.
The Americas · 1840s–1889Peru's guano and its bondholdersPeru's fertiliser boom was run through London and Paris merchant houses, and the debt it left ended with British creditors holding the country's railways.
The Americas · 1952–1954Was Guatemala's coup about bananas?Guatemala's elected government gave unused land to farmers, some of it United Fruit's, and a coup backed by the CIA reversed it.
The Americas · 2020sThe Amazon cattle frontierForest is cleared for cattle, the beef and leather reach Europe, and the EU keeps delaying its own law against it.
The Americas · 2021–todayPróspera sues HondurasA charter-city company says Honduras owes it about US$10.7bn for repealing the law its zone depended on, and no tribunal has yet decided.
Asia
Asia · 1830–1870Java's Cultivation SystemFrom 1830, Javanese villages had to grow export crops for the Dutch colonial government, and the profits helped balance the Dutch state's own books.
Asia · 1838–1917India's indentured workersWhen slavery ended, the planters turned to workers from India, shipped across the world on contracts that bound them for years.
Asia · 1839–1842The Opium Wars and Hong KongOpium grown in British India paid for Britain's tea, and when China tried to stop the trade, a war forced it to keep buying.
Asia · 1943Bengal's famine, 1943In wartime Bengal, food kept moving to the war effort while people starved, and historians still argue over how far Churchill was to blame.
Asia · 2010–2022Who built Qatar's World Cup?Migrant workers, many of them from South Asia, built Qatar's World Cup, and a review that FIFA itself commissioned said FIFA should compensate them.
Asia · 2013–todayRana Plaza and the price of clothesAfter a Bangladeshi garment factory collapsed in 2013, few of the brands that bought from it paid much, and wages in the industry are still at poverty level.
Britain and Ireland
Britain and Ireland · 1830sSlavery money in the HighlandsFortunes made from slavery, including the owners' compensation, bought Highland estates, and the new owners evicted at least 5,000 people.
Britain and Ireland · 1845–1852Food leaves a starving IrelandDuring the Irish famine, food kept leaving Ireland for Britain, and Parliament's own account confirms the exports were large.