The drain of India's wealth

Economic exploitation of India was the foundation of British colonial policy, and the chapter lets outside observers say so.

In 1895 the American historian Brooks Adams wrote: "Very soon after Plassey, the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the 'industrial revolution' ... began with the year 1760. ... Possibly since the world began no investment has ever yielded the profit reaped from the Indian plunder."

His claim is specific: Britain's Industrial Revolution, which needed huge investment, was made possible at least partly by what Will Durant called the 'stolen wealth from India'.

Indians then did the counting. Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons, wrote Poverty and Un-British Rule in India in 1901, adding up from British reports the wealth drained out of India. Romesh Chunder Dutt did the same in his Economic History of India.

All showed many billions of pounds taken out. A recent estimate by Utsa Patnaik, for 1765 to 1938, comes to 45 trillion US dollars in today's value, about 13 times Britain's whole GDP in 2023.

And it was not only taxes. Indians were charged for the colonial power's own spending on the railways, the telegraph network, and even on wars.

Now look again at the painting from the chapter's first page. Britannia sits higher; the colonies are lower and bent. Power is shown in the way they sit.

India offers pearls and jewels, China a precious jar, two dark figures bales of cotton. But did they really 'offer' anything, or did Britain take it by force or trickery? And note the Indians painted dark against Britannia's fair skin, showing a belief in the superiority of white people over 'natives'.