Growth under extractive rule

Extractive institutions (coercive taxation, forced labor, monopolies) often distort incentives, but they can also generate sustained economic activity — urbanization, market integration, and even rising real wages and human capital — when combined with investments in production and infrastructure. The claim reframes 'extractive = stagnation' into a conditional proposition: extraction slows but does not always block growth, and colonial regimes sometimes amplified preexisting extraction rather than creating it ex nihilo. — This matters because it forces a rethink of development prescriptions, historical responsibility narratives, and policy priorities for aid and state‑building by showing that institutional labels alone can mislead.