Opinion
Mint Quick Edit | Britain’s great plunder of India: Even worse than we thought
Summary
- Oxfam estimates that British colonial rule extracted $64.82 trillion from India between 1765 and 1900. This estimate should do more than just drop jaws in Britain.
Just how badly did the British plunder the wealth of India during its colonial rule?
This has been a matter of debate. Now, Oxfam has put out a staggering number based on its research.
The British empire, according to Oxfam, extracted as much as $64.82 trillion (in today’s money) from India between 1765 and 1900 and $33.8 trillion (or more than half) of it went to the richest 10%.
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In cash, this is enough to carpet London in notes of £50 almost four times over.
At the same time, the colonial era spelt India’s economic decline, with its share in the world’s industrial output plummeting from a fourth of the pie in 1750 to just 2% by 1900.
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The British clearly owe a lot of their material success to India.
And not just its wealthiest, many of whom trace their wealth back to slavery and colonialism, Britain’s new middle class benefited too, grabbing about a third of the wealth brought from India.
True, advances of the Industrial Age had a significant role in British success, but that cannot be a pretext to deny that a case for reparations can be made.
This is not about money alone, though.
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The British education system must stop glossing over this inglorious chapter in its history. That would be a start.
