Between 1765 and 1938, Great Britain would steal $45,000 billion from India, according to historians’ calculations Utsa Patnaik. The colonial powers were able to impose an absolute monopoly on the trade of the subcontinent through the intermediary of the East India Co. whose attribution consisted in buying their goods from Indians with their own money under clever pretexts.

Indeed, while – prior to the establishment of this obligation in 1765 – Great Britain relinquished Indian property by settling it in the traditional way for the time, i.e. primarily against silver metal. East India seeks to devote a third of the income generated from taxes imposed on the Indian people towards the purchase of all its rich produce, which ranges from textiles to rice and timber. In other words, the colonizers recycled some of this tax by paying for its purchases from the Indian peasants and workers with their money, which is more by the betrayal we know, because the colonized saw nothing but fire because of the bodies that taxed them. definitely not people buying their stuff.

Economic parasitism!

Great Britain even benefited doubly from this intervention because its surplus, in iron for example, was re-exported by it throughout Europe at high prices, thus enabling it to finance its own growth and industrialization. The end of the East India Co. monopoly. circa 1847 did not lead to the enrichment of India, as the country’s exporters were only authorized to pay through Council Bills which could only be issued by the Crown Treasury. Indian producers of course from this period had the right to sell their goods to other countries, but they could only pay in the currency they were forced to acquire in London in exchange for gold and silver, silver-metal.

After all, Indian merchants were paid – not in Council Bills – but in Rupees . As India’s wealth was diverted by Great Britain, India was largely indebted to the colonial powers when – in fact – was largely in a trade surplus due to the large influx of products it exported. . Not content with plundering the Indian population, the British also enslaved it through debt.

The impact of Elizabeth II’s death

Centuries of poverty and misery could have been avoided by the Indians if their country had been able to reinvest the product of its wealth for its own development, rather than finance the Industrial Revolution and the coincidence of the British wars which could only prosper by this systematic grace. plunder of an entire exploited subcontinent without hesitation. Utsa Patnaik’s study unequivocally shows that this 45 trillion (which is almost 20 times the UK’s current annual GDP!) has made possible the prosperity of the occupying power.

In general, it was the 14 Commonwealth countries, those who left it and those who never joined after the colonizers left that developed Britain – not the other way around. In this case, Elizabeth II’s death will have a profound impact on a system that has already exploded with Barbados, which has had a Head of State since last year, Jamaica, wanting to become a republic, the Bahamas contemplating this type of formula.

And others will follow who are also on the verge of demanding substantial reparations from a country where feudalism still reigns and where the current Prime Minister is only so with the legitimacy of 80,000 voters.

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Michael Santiis a macroeconomist, specialist in financial markets and central banks. He is the founder and CEO ofArt Trading & Finance
. He just published “Armchair 37” with foreword by Edgar Morin.
He is also the author of a new book: “The Testament of a Disillusioned Economist”. The page Facebook and her sonTwitter