Just how much did the British 'loot' India?

[deepix]

I read a book about the British Empire by one of its own historians, Niall Ferguson. It's been a long time since I wrote about a book in this space, but this one is interesting enough.

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World is interesting because it often takes a sympathetic view of colonialism. Ferguson has raised many a controversy for this

Comments

[deepix]

The author does talk about the oppression done by the British, but what I found interesting was his defence of the Empire, so this entry contains mostly such extracts. :-D

Intersting

[twistedlogix]

Adding this book to my to read list.

Dadabhai Naorji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, is considered an exhaustive account how the system worked back then.

Naoroji was a moderate, all he asked was for constitutional reforms extending basic rights even to natives and he didn't mind ruled by British, but his works inspired lots of nationalists including Tilak, Gandhi, Bose and Nehru.

[skjaidev]

The British Empire, according to Ferguson, dissolved not because of nationalistic movements of India or its other colonies, but because the Empire itself was weakened by its fight with other imperialist powers. While that may be debatable, there is no doubt that the Second World War was a severe drain on England's coffers and hastened its exit from India.

Read this chapter if not the entire book. This shows how bankrupt the Empire got trying to win WWII and had to make huge concessions to get aid under lend-lease from the US which destroyed their economy. They had to get rid of the colonies to focus on internal recovery / growth.