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This raises some questions: when was the most recent time a conqueror seriously benefited from free labor?
My first thought was Alsace-Lorraine. But apparently the economic richness is hindsight bias; Germany originally took it on nationalist and military planning grounds. France took it back for similar reasons. I assume Hitler was eager to tap its manpower and natural resources, but I couldn’t confirm what was actually extracted. Does Wages break down how many rifles, airframes, etc. were sourced from which territories?
Anyway, I think we have to go back further. Plenty of colonization had economic motives, but I’m reluctant to count cases where the free labor was all imported. Not sure about the later colonial banana republics, either. Maybe administrations like the Raj are a better fit.
My point is that free labor is hard to get. Back when the only income was feudal dues, maybe you could reasonably expect a ceded province to improve cash flow. But that was based on the unfree nature of serfdom and the limits of human capital. Add mobility, and your free labor becomes no labor. Raise complexity, and serf labor won’t get you a new airplane.
The states which won WWII benefited from free labor because they weren’t relying on conquered territory. As soon as you start conquering, I think all the good options are off the table.
Depends how we define "Conquest."
If we count the takeover and integration of territory regardless of violence, we'd be talking about Hong Kong going back to China, right?
Before that, we have South Vietnam conquered by North Vietnam, though they would have labeled that as liberation rather than conquest, and they did not benefit solely or immediately.
The USSR did not conquer most of the Eastern Bloc in the sense of integrating them into their territory, but they had effective control over their labor and benefitted from it, though you could also quibble with "free" under Communism.
This is why I think the idea of prc violently taking Taiwan is unlikely. They can't take TSMC, within a few years tsmc would be irrelevant, if it even survived the war. They must non violently absorb Taiwan to benefit.
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At the oldest possible candidate, the Japanese conquest of Korea. There’s almost certainly Soviet examples in the late forties or early fifties, as well, I just don’t know them.
As a borderline example in the 21st century, the junta in Myanmar had been making use of forced labor in territories conquered from the rebels to produce cash resources which financed the war machine.
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