On the American continent alone, of the 145 million people living in the hemisphere before the conquest, 90–95 percent had been exterminated by 1691.4 Most of the survivors were condemned to poverty. Around the time Columbus arrived in America, a typical European had an average per capita income three times that of someone living in what is now sometimes called the Global South. By 1850, that ratio had increased to five to one. By the early to mid-twentieth century, when around 85 percent of the world was under some form of colonial rule, the ratio was fourteen to one. The inequality that plagues us today is not entirely the result of colonialism but at the same time cannot be explained without it.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 275