Have you ever wondered about why the British only emigrated to a handful of their colonies, despite at one point controlling 1/5 of the globe?
Or in more frank terms, why did a lot more Brits go to New Zealand, and not Jamaica?
The answer might surprise you, it certainly surprised me.
Life in the Age of Discover was, as Hobbes put it, nasty, brutish, and short. That was particularly true if you were an actual discoverer.
These days, places like Jamaica and Malaysia are wonderful places to go on holiday. Warm, close to the water, tropical.
But guess who else loves those conditions? Bugs, bacteria, and all sorts of diseases. According to one estimate, there was a 75% chance of death for Europeans moving to the Caribbean during the 18th century. Their immune systems just couldn’t deal with the new pathogens.
So, for Britain, the answer was simple. Send a bare minimum of people to the danger colonies, and have them focus entirely on wealth extraction. Sure, build a few roads, maybe a train, but the focus needs to be on securing the bag.
But for those with far less disease risks (Canada, USA, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia), there was a chance where people could move to, survive for more than a few years, and actually create a new society there. While the Brits were obviously pretty keen on getting their hands on Australian beef and New Zealand wool, they treated those areas far, far differently, and better, than their other colonies.
We’re all prisoners of geography, and history does have consequences.