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That has been states many times, the Spaniards ignore it. Ironic how they hate the Sudacas but will defend the Spanish Empire to the end.If so, it can be the same case as with many South-American countries. Namely a large non-European minority/majority keeping the economy back. While Canada and Australia have/had a strong European majority.
The Northern nations of Europe didn't develop as quickly because:"Nordic" or "Northern European" economic superiority claims are unfounded especially when one looks back and see it how it was like in the past (Renaissance Italy was more prosperous than most - if not all - of Northern Europe, and Spain too did very well, unlike Sweden, f.e, or even England):
- They were isolated in comparison to Southern Europe
- Their climate wasn't as good for growing crops as Southern Europe
- Southern Europe traded and learned from the Middle East and had a monopoly on trade going to Northern Europe from the Med.
- Northern nations were harrassed by Southern one's such as France and Spain (cough, cough, Netherlands, England)
- Southern nations were well placed to take over from Rome, Northern nations built their nations from tribes
- The comparisons are unfair, you are comparing larger and highly populated Southern Countries such as Italy, Spain and France to smaller Germanic nations in territory and population such as the Netherlands or Denmark. A more equal comparison would be to compare Portugal with Denmark.
You might find this thread of a lot of interest.
Indeed, it is not Spain's fault that South America largely failed - it is Spain's fault that they didn't colonise better areas with fewer natives and better conditions for Europeans such as the USA.I know they are not succesful. That was my point. You talked about the failure of Spaniards to create wealth countries (today) in Latin-America, and you bring the examples of USA or Canda. But the situation of Latin-America was similar to that of South-Africa, a great majority of the pulation being indigenous, and trying to create a european-style society.
Spain and Portugal had their chance, too late - England and France got in there and beat you to the good bits.
Lol, by Northern Europe do you mean Germany, England and the Netherlands in that equation? Or are you simply comparing large nations such as Italy and Spain to small nations such as Scandinavia? (which even as a whole would still be a relatively small nation).No, it is not. Spain and Italy combined are richer than the entire Northern Europe combined.
Germany, England and the Netherlands together far outpace Italy and Spain and the Netherlands although having a smaller economy and population than both Spain and Italy more than punches above it's weight.
GDP per capita means nothing, countries with high GDP per capita are usually tiny nations dependent on finance and functioning as tax havens.
You mention Andorra, but you failed to mention Lichtenstein and Luxembourg - similar size and with higher GDP per capita than Andorra - Lichtenstein is smaller.
Besides, GDP per capita is irrelevant here, GDP PPP is the real measure of the size of an economy, in this scale Europe goes in order something like this: Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, Spain.
And to suggest that Andorra could outperform Denmark or Sweden or any other Scandinavian nation bar the Faroe Islands is really quite ridiculous, look through this source and just find Andorra in it, it's pretty far down the list - like in the 140s.
Spain and Italy have higher total GDPs than any of the Scandinavian countries because they're bigger and have a much bigger population many times bigger than all of Scandinavia's.
Your comparison is unfair, if you want to compare Italy or Spain to any Northern country then compare them to England - at least it has a similar size population. But you won't, because even without the UK England still outperforms both nations!
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