Between the years 1765 and 1938, they siphoned sums that would today be worth around $45 trillion out of India and into British coffers. This flow allowed Britain to buy strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to the country’s industrialisation. They also used it to finance the industrialisation of white settler colonies like Canada and Australia, and to pay for the British welfare system that, after the 1870s, finally started to address the misery generated by enclosure (in the late 19th century, more than half of Britain’s domestic budget was funded by
...more
