Skip to main content

240-300 Trillion Pounds:What could have been the total wealth that was drained out of India during the British rule?

3.9 Million Pounds paid by Mir Jafar to East India Company 1757
230000 pounds per annum from Mir Jafar’s Successor
Annual takling 1932900 pounds from Bengal Bihar and Orissa
Annual revenue from Bihar alone: 680000 pounds
Famine 1770 : 10 million dead, directly due to British policies
Annual revenue from Bengal from 1793: 2.68 million pounds
Famines in 1783, 1792, 1807, 1813, 1823, 1834 and 1854
Famines in 1877, 1878, 1889, 1892, 1897, 1900 : 15 million dead. Note how the incidence of famine has increased with the passage of colonial rule…
https://youtu.be/uV1Ph2FBQZA 
Revenue from Allahabad: Pounds 1682306 per annum circa 1800s
Land Tax: 50% of produce
Maratha area: annual revenue 1,500,000 pounds per annum  circa 1800s
Indian Debt: pounds 51,000,000 in 1857
Indian Debt: pounds 97,000,000 in 1862
Indian Debt pounds 200,000,000 in 1901
44 Million sterling annual outflow from India to Britain. Multiply this figure alone by around 150 – that is approximate 6600 Million – 6.6 Billion. Now compound by 8%… the number comes to 37 Trillion pounds – or nearly 73 Trillion Dollars. India’s external debt as on March 2011 was 345.8 Billion Dollars.  . (This last bit – the compounding and the extrapolation of annual revenues over 150 years is my guesstimate; to equal it out I have used a factor 112 years)
Just one years revenue earnings to the British amount to 243 Billion Sterling- nearly 480 Billion Dollars even when I compound it by just 8%….. more than our total external debt . Just one years takings…
Now just compound the 1.5 Million taking in 1757 for 245 years at 8% – and you get a jaw-dropping number of 232 Trillion Sterling – or 475 Trillion Dollars.
Oh a trick question – “Money”, very little as even what was collected in taxes was largely kept / spent in India, by the EIC agents, Army (~ 40% of tax revenue), or spent on local works (~ £400,000,000 between 1870-1930), rents, goods, bribes, Churches and the like. The local coinage had little value outside of the region it was collected in. If you turned up in Britain with a pocket full of: Bengal: Rupees, Anna, pice, pie; Madras: Pagodas, Fanams, Cash;Canton Tales, Bengkulu dollars; Bombay: Rupees, anna, pice, paisa;Mocha dollars, Travancore: Fanams….. your options for spending / exchanging them would be rather limited, so the “Money” largely stayed in the region of India it was minted in, though a few coins can be found in a number of British museums and collections. As to how much was robbed, the perpetrator not identified and taken out the country, I’d say virtually none, as any smart thief would convert the money into something exchangeable outside of the sub-continent.
FYI: The value of the goods TRADED from / to India is well documented and publicly available eg.
East India Company: Trade and Domestic Financial Statistics, 1755-1838

and there have been numerous books and papers that attempt to estimate net flows over the period, but typically they give conclusions along the lines of:
research suggests that from about 1870 to 1930 Britain took about 1% of India’s wealth per year.
The National Archives – British Empire – India – EIC – 1814-35 – Cloth trade
Alternatively if you take simplistic / theoretical / populist approach you’ll get an answer along the following lines:
  • In 1700: India’s population has been estimated at 165 million (27% of The World’s), with a GDP of $90.75 bn (22.6% of The World’s), or $550 per capita (92% of China’s).
  • In 1947: India’s population (before partition) was approximately 415 million (17.3%of The World’s), with a GDP $258.164 bn (5% of The World’s), or $622 per capita (130% of China’s).
  • In 2008: India + Bangladesh + Pakistan had a combined population around 1.621 billion (22% of The World’s), with a GDP of $3,979 bn (8% of The World’s), $2,454 per capita (36% of China’s)
Derived from Angus Maddison’s world model found here: Historical Statistics of the World Economy: 1-2008 AD – knoema.com
So assuming the British hadn’t replaced the Mughals, and India could have maintained it’s 27% share or the World population, in 1946 it should have had a population of 700 million, not 415. So that’s 285 million people and $157 bn/year, for starters, then multiply the number by the number of lost generations / years, and you obtain some big numbers.
Similarly if India had maintained its GDP share, with it could have achieved with it’s native technologies, with a population of between 2 and 2.2bn, in 1947 (land and diseases permitting), you’re looking at 1.6 to 1.8bn bodies that need to be accounted for and $990 bn/year, multiplying back the numbers get very big.
Going further and if the Mughal and Maratha empires had decided to build 100’s of IIT in mid 1700’s, rather than fight each other, and suck up to the Britishers, the numbers get very, very, very big.
Or looking at it numerically:
  • 415 million > 165 million citizens
  • $258.164 bn > $90.75 bn/year GDP
  • $622 > $550 per capita.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scriptures of Vedic Civilization

Vedas are the most ancient, revered, and sacred of the world's scriptures. The Vedas reveal the root of all the knowledge and also called as “Pramana Shastra” (The proof or the base of all the knowledge and by itself does not need a proof). The Vedas were not written by any human, but was revealed to the human through the ancient Rishis (The seers) during their superconscious state or Tapas. Hence the ancient Rishis were not the authors of Vedas, but only the instrument through which the Vedas were made available to human. It is wrong to say that Vedas are the ancient knowledge of Hindus, as the phrase “Hindus” were given to Indians by British. There was only once universal Vedic society in the beginning and there was no concept of race or religion. Hence the Vedic knowledge was revealed and available to the entire humanity. It is also to be noted that Vedas did not have any script, as the knowledge was propagated only through teaching and listening. This method is also r
Post a Comment
Read more

Vedic & Celtic Cultures Are One

by Druuis Belenios Ategnatos ,  Aballonas, PO Box 120149, Staten Island NY 10312- 0149 As humanity begins to break free of the Dark Age caused by Christian Europe’s conquest (military, political and cultural) of much of the world, it becomes obvious that the history taught by their culture leaves much to be desired. This includes the history of Europe itself which also had its own Christian invasion, conquest and colonization. Finally, scholars within Western culture are beginning to recognize what the scholars and other leaders of traditional societies have been saying all along, for many centuries. I am going to briefly describe some of the latest findings regarding Indo-European culture. Some of this is theoretical. Some of it is proven to exacting standards. In the interest of brevity, I shall not attribute the following information to the proper academic form. Much of the material used is yet to be published, and is cutting-edge, but should become available soon. My
Post a Comment
Read more

Vedic Origins of the Europeans: The Danavas, Children of Danu

By David Frawley [Pandit Vamadeva Shastri] This article shows how the Proto-European Aryans, like the Celts, were originally a Vedic people called the Danavas or Sudanavas (good Danavas) connected to Vedic kings, sages and yogis. It is adapated from Frawley’s Rig Veda and the History of India. Many ancient European peoples, particularly the Celts and Germans, regarded themselves as children of Danu, with Danu meaning the Mother Goddess, who was also, like Sarasvati in the Rig Veda, a river Goddess. The Celts called themselves "Tuatha De Danaan", while the Germans had a similar name. Ancient European river names like the Danube and various rivers called Don in Russia, Scotland, England and France reflect this, as do place names like Den-mark (Danava-Marga), to mention but a few. The Danube which flows to the Black Sea is their most important river and could reflect their eastern origins. In fact, the term Danu or Danava (the plural of Danu) appears to form the subst
Post a Comment
Read more