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RELATED THEME:
‘COLONIALISM: HOW THE BRITISH EMPIRE STOLE $45 TRILLION FROM INDIA. AND LIED ABOUT IT’
by Jason Hickel (2018) based on key original research by economist Utsa Patnaik:
“There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India – as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence. New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik – just published by Columbia University Press – deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.”
