Thursday, April 30, 2009

By 1940, India was a drain on Britain

Economics was the primary reason Britain left India. Gandhi, you said?
Losing Hope, Glory and Assets - WSJ.com
Still, it is not wrong for Mr. Clarke to assign the blame for imperial collapse to wartime commitments. And money had a great deal to do with it. The war, Mr. Clarke notes, "left India a creditor on a vast scale, with Britain owing it huge sums in the form of the sterling balances." This fact meant that London actually owed New Delhi some £1.3 billion pounds (or $5.2 billion in 1945 dollars). The empire had conferred many benefits on Britain, but by the 1940s its administration and defense were a net drain on London.

1 comment:

kuttychathan said...

That is very strange... Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in his Discovery of India that millions of weavers died of hunger, when British killed the native textile industry, inorder to help their Manchester based companies. "Bones of the weavers are bleaching the plains of India", the then viceroy is said to have complained to the British government. So what the Brits are whining about... ? Nobody asked them to come and 'civilise' us, in the first place....