For 300 years Britain has outsourced mayhem. Finally it's coming home I believe that the current political crisis (in UK) has little to do with the expenses scandal, still less with Gordon Brown's leadership. It arises because our economic system can no longer extract wealth from other nations. For the past 300 years, the revolutions and reforms experienced by almost all other developed countries have been averted in Britain by foreign remittances.
There will probably never be a full account of the robbery this country organised, but there are a few snapshots. In his book Capitalism and Colonial Production, Hamza Alavi estimates that the resource flow from India to Britain between 1793 and 1803 was in the order of £2m a year, the equivalent of many billions today. The economic drain from India, he notes, "has not only been a major factor in India's impoverishment … it has also been a very significant factor in the industrial revolution in Britain". As Ralph Davis observes in The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, from the 1760s onwards India's wealth "bought the national debt back from the Dutch and others … leaving Britain nearly free from overseas indebtedness when it came to face the great French wars from 1793". http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/british-empire-colonies-banks-reform Please read the comments and comment on the article at the above link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/4088495 -- With best wishes S Chander
