Who Benefited from the British Empire?

foreign was elected MP for Central Finsbury he was the first Indian to enter the House of Commons navaji was so Austrian who In 1855 moved to England as a cotton Trader and professor of Gujarati at University College London in 1866 with funding from Indian princes he established the east Indian association to to press for the Indian civil service to be open to Indians and he also to publicize the drain Theory after a period back in India where he was the founder of the Indian National Congress he returned to London and stood in 1886 as liberal candidate for the solidly conservative seat of Holborn where we now are Lord Salisbury the conservative prime minister thought that no constituency I quote was ready to elect a black man and there is Lord Salisbury Doge of Venice spurning navaji a reference to Othello Lords uh devotee beg your pardon won the neighboring seat of saint of Finsbury in 1892 where he supported Irish home rule votes for women the abolition of the House of Lords and the rights of India in 1901 he pulled together his writings in a famous book poverty and unbritish Rule in this book navochi attacked the hypocrisy of the British for claiming that they would rule India in the inches of Indians he quoted Queen Victoria in 1858 in her Proclamation on assuming Crown responsibility from the East India Company the proclamation stated that our subjects of whatever race or Creed be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service went on to say that that it is our Earnest desire to administer India's government for the benefits of all our subjects in their prosperity will be our strength in their contentment our security and in their gratitude our best reward well novolci complained that these promises were broken with the result I quote that the present system of government is destructive and despotic to the Indians and unbritish and suicidal to Britain at this stage navaji was not calling for Independence and he accepted I quote the very bright side of British rule and the many blessings of Law and Order which it has conferred on India indeed it could even be read in these remarks as being a modern apologist for Empire he referred to Britain's Humane influence in Banning Sati he referred to the introduction of English education which says taught the highest political ideal operative citizenship and he referred to the freedom of press and speech but this is in a way getting at the hypocrisy of the British he said the current rule of India was unbritish in what ways was he done British well first of all because Britain was impoverishing India by draining out of India 30 million pounds a year taxes were raised in India and spent in the United Kingdom so that he said the masses of India do not get enough to provide the bare necessaries of life this drain was continued by a large deficit on trade between India and Britain and the deficit on trade Britain selling water injured and Industrial to Britain that drain was increased by the cost of servicing loans from Britain to India by officials remitting their savings to England and then drawing their pensions in England when they retired the cost of governing India was born partly within Westminster the terrain he said removes capital from India to Britain which then gave Britain a monopoly of trade and Industry which further exploited and drained India how he asked what the trade deficit between Britain and India covered well it was by India selling opium to China this he said was a sin on England's head and a curse on India the opium trade fills up England's drain India derives not a particle of benefit on top of that he said India clearly needed railways as in the United States of America but there was a difference about the way in which Railways were provided he said in India as against the United States in the United States the workers were American an expenditure from loans coming from outside America to build the railways remained in the country they bought American Iron Americans Railway locomotives this was not true in India he said the loans paid salaries to directors in London it paid for European staff who held the senior positions who returned some of their salaries to England and then to their pensions back in England the cost of working the railways were partly paid to England the interest on the loans were paid back to England and the government of India guaranteed an extraordinarily High rate of interest on those loans more than could be received in other countries the result then he said of building the railways which are undoubtedly a benefit was to increase the drain he said that as India is treated at present all the new departments opened in the name of civilization advancement progress simply resolve themselves into so much new provision for so many more Europeans and so much new burden on exhausting India so Railways irrigation works and so on were merely adding to the drain even more than that he said there was a drain of expertise and knowledge which left India when the Europeans retired home the British might be educating the Indians he himself went to a very good College elfinson college in Mumbai but he said those Indians who had that education I quote find themselves simply so many dummies ornamented with a tinsel of education and then once they have that tinsel their whole end and aim of life is ended because they couldn't be employed in meaningful jobs so he said the English boasted of introducing education and then act as if all this boast was pure moonshine well even further he said the pressure of Taxation levied by the English on a country with a low per capita income meant that there was double the level of English taxation in India he said the only reason why the Indian government does not go into bankruptcy is that it can by its despotism squeeze out more and more from the helpless taxpayer without Mercy or without let or hindrance he went even further he said that the English claimed to be free Traders no free markets free trade but he said this is not really true I quote free trade between England and India is something like a race between a starving exhausting invalid and a strong man with a horse to ride on free trade between countries which have equal command over their own resources is one thing but what can India do before powerful English interests India must and does go to the wall he said that it was not a fair balance then a fair Power Balance Indian industry needs protection from British exports foreign India was paying for English British imperialism elsewhere in the world you see on this slide Indian soldiers in the first World War now what she said that all the wars by which the British Indian Empires built up have not only been fought mainly with Indian blood but every father of expenditure incurred in all wars and proceedings within and Beyond the frontier of India by which the Empire has been built up and maintained has been exacted from the Indian people Britain has spent nothing there is a great Injustice that every expenditure occurred even for British interest is charged to India so not only within India but Indian troops being sent overseas the overall result of this catalog of drains is that there were two indias one India was rich and phosphorus the India of British officials and capitalists who carry away enormous wealth they could not understand the second India the poverty stick in India I quote this India bled and exploited in every way of their wealth of their services of their land labor and all Resources by the foreigners helpless and voiceless governed by the arbitrary law and argument of force and with Injustice and unrighteousness this India of the Indians became the poorest country in the world after 150 years of British rule to the disgrace of the British name well he was saying things like this in the House of Commons you can imagine it caused some consternation the overall result he said was that the British Empire is built up entirely with the money of India and in great measure by the blood of India besides this hundreds of millions or more probably several thousands of millions of money which Britain has unceasingly and ever increasingly drawn from British Indians and is still drawing has materially helped to make Britain the greatest the richest the most glorious nation in the world but Indians had no say in the expenditure of revenues or in a good government of India the British he said again were hypocrites they had a glorious struggle for constitutional representative government the Civil War The Glorious Evolution the greater Reform Act of 1832 they urged this everywhere on other nations but on the other hand they maintained what he called a desponding despotism themselves in India and this was disastrous for India oh sorry England itself it meant it was undermining English values and to character it was leading to a body of Englishmen trained up and accustomed to despotism with all the feelings of impatience pride and high-handedness of the despot becoming gradually ingrained in them and with additional training of the dissimulation of constitutionalism the English in India are descending and degenerating to the lower level of Asiatic despotism so the overall result he said is that British rule was bad for Britain it was also bad for India because it deprived the people of wealth work and wisdom now this argument of navaji continues to shape current day discourse a recent book by a current Congress MP in glorious Empire what the British did to India is very close to navochi although it goes even further in arguing that there was a deliberate policy of de-industrialization by the British and going as far as the call for reparations from Britain to India in other words what I've just been talking about is current politics are not just history so there is one book published in 1901 part of this debate around the nature of the British Empire I don't want to turn to a second book which came out a year later that is the book by another liberal politician John Hobson who in 1902 during the Boer War published imperialism a study so it's provoked by the Boer War which he thought was a terrible mistake and also by the social problems of poverty and unemployment within Britain namoji argued the British rule was impoverishing India Hobson argued that imperialism was caused by an entrenched poverty within Britain in his view imperialism benefited only a particular small group within Britain the main concern of Hobson In 1902 was a Scramble for Africa and he said that recent annexations of tropical countries procured a great expense have furnished poor and precarious markets imperialism is said was a distraction from what would make Britain economically efficient and Powerful he said our most profitable and Progressive trade is with rival industrial Nations whose territories we have no desire to Annex whose markets we cannot force and whose active antagonism we are provoking in other words the United States and Germany the benefits of Imperial expenditure he said went mainly to suppliers of armaments and public loans to Planters in the Empire and to officials above all he said the Empire reflected a struggle for outlets for investment for Surplus Capital within Britain so a quote he said Great Britain has been becoming a nation living upon tribute from abroad included from India and the classes who enjoy this tribute have had an ever increasing incentive to employ the public policy the public purse the public Force to extend the field of their private Investments so receiving typical report then spend it to increase imperialism this aggressive imperialism which cost the taxpayer so dear he said which is of so little value to the manufacturer and the trader is a source of great gain to investor who cannot find at home the profitable use he seeks for his capital and insists that his government should help him to profitable and secure investment support so why could the investors not find profitable outlets at home he said because there's a lack of domestic markets to absorb production and capital why was that because there was a maldistribution of consuming power which prevents the absorption of Commodities and capital within the country the rich were oversaving they had so much money they couldn't spend it all they oversaved but because the poor people were so poor they couldn't buy Commodities buy Goods therefore the oversaving of the rich the under consumption of the poor led to imperialism the economic route of imperialism was Monopoly profits unearned excessive income of this small class and it led then to a false economy of distribution the solution he said was social reform was was to read distribute money from the rich oversaving to the poor under consuming imperialism was a parasitical Distortion of the economy so he said it is Idle to attack imperialism as political expedience or policies unless the ax is laid at the economic route of the tree and the classes for whose interests imperialism works are shown of a surplus revenues which seek this Outlet so neurology saw two empires so two indias Hobson saw two englands in the South the consumers England living off Investments with conspicuous waste and ostentatious leisure which called into being trades based upon their patronage who trades which were antagonistic to useful industry a playground he said for socially reputable sports and entertainment and these people here enjoying Ascot in 1910 were the supporters of imperialism and militarism meanwhile in the north a producers England was based on industry in which will to do workers were engaged with skilled with skills with an active associational life supporting economic and social reform now again this argument of Hobson has been very well supported by many modern historians two influential historians Peter Kane and Tony Hopkins use the phrase gentlemanly capitalism the empire was supported by the gentlemanly capitalists a fusion of the landed aristocracy and the city of London as the rents of landowners dropped in the late 19th century from competition from American Canadian wheat those landowners intermarried with the with the families of financiers looking for status they went to the same Public Schools they went to Oxford and Cambridge universities they dominated the government in a Nexus of the treasury and the city of London which according to this view ignored Northern industry it led according to a recent work of the historian Yusef Cassis it led to a renewed Elite which added the financial part of the city to The Prestige of the old aristocracy an outstanding example of this the bearing family The Merchant Bank here in the city of London the bearings married into the family of Earl Gray of the Reform Act and the tea Fame intermarried into the harwoods and the Grenville family Sarah secrets the bearings Bank funded the Louisiana Purchase of the Midwest of the United States they funded the United States cotton trade they were involved in loans to Argentina but Thomas sparing the first Hill Northbrook was Viceroy of India his relative Evelyn firstville chroma worked as his private secretary I went on basically to rule Egypt after the loans that the British had made to Egypt were defaulted so it's these sort of people who are the so-called gentlemanly capitalists and it's a recent book by two American historians uh Davis and huttenberg Mom in the pursuit of Empire say that the owners of the overseas investment were predominantly from the south of England so you say that London uh shareholders and sample of companies London was a major investor in Imperial but not in domestic industry whereas non-metopolitan domestic industry not in the Empire so they say there were these two groups of capitalists here and they go on to argue that the costs of the empire fell upon taxpayers in general who paid for excessive defense costs was the benefits went to that social group that Hobson was talking about the consumers England of the South now if we were to put together neurology and Hobson we immediately have an answer to the question that my lecture posed who benefited from the British Empire if they're right the clear answer is India suffered a drain of wealth that went to Britain where it benefited southern English Bankers landowners officials it did not benefit within England Northern industry and workers but is this right I would suggest that there's an element of Truth in all of this but it's also too simple that matters within Britain and within India are actually rather more complicated we need to look much more closely by drilling down into the politics of Imperial relations between Metropol the home country and the colonies and we need to look at the internal Dynamics within both to complicate this picture which shifts over time I was much more complicated than our two link Victorian and Edwardian liberals assumed let me turn first of all to the politics of the Raj the politics of India in my first lecture in the series I argued that Britain in the 18th century had a trade deficit with India injury was selling fine quality Muslims to Britain Britain was actually draining wealth to India it was sending out bullion to India that changes in the second quarter of the 19th century when India became the only major area of the world with which Britain had a trade surplus so you see here India as a okay friendship point of view it's a trade deficit of 16 billion pounds to the United Kingdom the United Kingdom has a deficit with Continental Euro for 45 million pounds and with the United States of 50 million pounds the only major areas which Britain has a trade surplus is India so that was absolutely critical to Britain's ability to run a global economy in the late 19th century but why did that come about the book in glorious Empire by Thoreau which I mentioned make some astonishing and incorrect claims that there was a drain in the 18th century from India to Britain no that's not true the trade in the 18th century was it was the other way it turns around he also argues that the British the East India Company was systematically destroying looms and cutting off the thumbs of Weavers to stop them weaving well actually no this ninja company made its money by selling Muslims to England the people who wanted to stop industrialization in India of course were the Lancashire cotton textile industry and what that suggests immediately is to complicate the picture I've been telling you which is that the East India Company in fact gentlemanly capitalists were losing out to the Lancashire cotton trade so it's a bit more complicated than that the main reason why injured tea industrialized was technical advance in British industry allowing competition with Indian textiles initially in third markets and then finally in the second quarter of the 19th century Lancashire cooking peace within India and that's the industrialization of India was common to the periphery of the world economy in the 19th century the share of the Indian Workforce in Industry fell from about 15 to 18 percent in 1800 to 10 in 1900. but the Indian textile industry did not entirely collapse it survived by cutting prices using Sheen spun yarn although that of course affected the independent status of Weavers and also within towns Weavers were produced in the most valuable artistic cloth used for example sarees for women mixing together gold wire with silk and cotton which the English producers couldn't do so some deindustrialization not entirely the labor from the industries moved into agriculture where wages fell Farms were unable to sustain so many workers and there's a loss of supplementary income from weaving to compensate farmers in times of hardship or famine so we need to look at that in the general terms of what was happening at the periphery of the world economy but there are also signs of a reversal of cotton production in India so you see the percentage of imports or total consumption engine dropped that's what's coming from uh particularly from Lancashire Indian Mill production starts to rise and you see the hand Loom production does continue to be quite a substantial part of it so we need to be a little bit more cautious than Thoreau is about about what is happening by the late 19th century cotton meals were developing in Bombay using cheap labor but also Machinery which is actually more modern than what was being used in Lancashire the key person here is another passes or Austrian Tata who built the cotton Mills in nagpur and then his son went on to build the massive tartar steel Works which you see you see there and also hydroelectric power and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore there's also and I'll go on to talk about this again in a moment a rise of jute spinning and weaving in Calcutta in part finance and operated by British firms this development of these industries jute and cotton is going to have a major impact on politics within Britain itself I'll come back to that in a moment now how was the drain the deficitate deficits I've been talking about the costs of supporting all the troops in Britain and overseas how is that going to be paid for well not you was right British Indian troops were being sent overseas 11 000 injured troops were sent to China in 1860 for example and a massive number of 1.2 million to uh fight in the first World War and the cost of this was of the home charges the drain was getting higher because India was on a silver standard the rupee was silver based which is depreciating against the gold-based pound you may remember The Importance of Being Earnest When Miss prison tells her charge you will read your political economy in my absence the chapter on the fall of the rupee you may admit it is somewhat too Sensational even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side well people at the time realize actually that's not just a joke that is true it did have a male dramatic side as the value of the Europe rupee was dropping you need to have more taxes to pay the home charges which are denominated in Gold based Sterling that causes political problems in England but also the fall in the value of the rupee means that Indians trying to buy Lancashire Goods valued in gold how to pay more so it's hitting the Lancashire cotton textile industry now who is going to win out in these debates this is a difficult political decisions both in India and in Britain if you were the Viceroy of India you don't want to stir that problem within India you're concerned that increasing taxes to pay the drain which is getting higher because of the rupee question will lead to problems of resistance if you increase the land tax or the salt tax the land tax was a major source of Revenue and the way in which the land tax was levied reflected different ideological views within Britain which created different groups within India with different views on taxation let me just explain that very quickly so one way in which you could raise land tax in England was through what was called a permanent settlement of Bengal in 1793. you gave a permanent right to hold the land to a zanandar like this elegant man here for paying a fixed amount to the British government or the Indian the British government in India The Peasant cultivators a huge estate would lose their rights the idea of the British government was if you gave a person like this absolute rights to the land for fixed charge they had an incentive improve the land because they would increase their profit there would be like an English improving aristocratic landowner unfortunately it didn't necessarily work out like that there was a disadvantage that they spent their money on building palaces upon ostentatious display so it was argued by the English and therefore because the and because the tax was fixed you had to try and raise taxes by other means the alternative view adopted by radicals in Britain like John's Mill and John James Stewart John Stuart Mill both of whom worked for this ninja company don't have people like that work with small peasants if you can give small peasants uh secure ownership of their land they will have an incentive to invest so you have different views within Britain creating different sorts of societies within India so the zamandar against the riot the peasant and that actually did lead the riot system to Greater prosperity in the Punjab than in the zamindari system of Bengal so there's local variability which reflects both the local structure of society and Britain's engagement with that to enforce different ways or not now the land tax declines the other major source of Revenue are the monopolies on opium and salt that declines what goes up tariffs on whom do the tariffs fall England upon the English cotton producers so that is going to create a problem within India sorry big upon within England if you were a Lancashire cotton textile producer and it's also already becoming more difficult to sell your goods in India because of the change in exchange rates you don't want to have a tariff as well do you so in the late 19th century there's a battle going on if you are gentlemanly capitalist like the Viceroy the easiest thing you can do is to impose tariffs on the other hand if you're the Secretary of State for India a British politician sitting in the cabinet your concern is winning the general election on which was the area of the country which was a swing area which would go from conservative to liberals Lancashire so the gentlemany capitalists might have the money they didn't have the votes so we need to look very carefully here at how these debates go on so my argument would be in the late 19th century there was great difficulty increasing the tariffs because of the backlash coming from Lancashire so Towers were introduced at one point in the 1890s 1894 in 1896 abolished but let's run ahead what happens with the first World War it changes India had supplied 1.2 million troops in the first World War at their expense and also donated 100 million pounds to support the war effort at the end of the war India has a massive debt also Rising nationalism what the British government decided to do in 1919 is to Grant fiscal autonomy to India the right to charge his own taxes and what would you do if you had fiscal autonomy in India and you don't want to stir up more nationalism you increase tariffs so at that point Lancashire is going to lose out and of course Lancashire in any case was now not the swing area that was going to make or break governments so you could see how this is creating a difficult problems and it affected nobody more than Winston Churchill Windsor Churchill had been empty for Oldham in a cotton textile area at the end of the first world war he was MP for Dundee Dundee was based upon jute spinning this is a great Jude spinning works for Cox Brothers in Dundee but is facing increased competition from Calcutta what is he going to do well he was caught in a terrible dilemma he didn't want to give fiscal autonomy to India because they're going to put tariffs on the goods coming from here but it's a free Trader foreign before the war he had introduced trade board acts of minimum wage legislation which applied to uh jute industry so the industrialists are saying what we want is uh protection against cheap engine Goods and we want to take away the minimum wage legislation the workers say no we don't want to take away the minimum wage legislation they go off for vote labor and the um in manufacturers are not satisfied by fact he's a free trade and doesn't want tariffs he loses the election in 1922. he goes to the South where these issues are not going to be so important this issue comes back again to affect uh Winston Churchill in the Second World War just before the second world war broke out it's agreed that if any Indian troops are used overseas in a forthcoming War Britain would pay Burma have been separated from India in 1937. pan invades Burma who is going to pay for the troops in Burma so at the end of the war there's a massive problem about uh Britain housing to pay for that the Sterling balances blocked Sterling balances Winston Churchill said well we shouldn't pay John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods conference also said well we can't afford it but it was realized by the British government that they could not break that obligation Leo Amery the Secretary of State for India a lead to conservative and supporter of imperialism criticized Winston Churchill he said when driving to the station to capture life or death train I should hardly think that you would tell the cabbie man you have no intention of paying when you get there so again this is big issues does it that is going on here about who is going to pay for this contribution Indian independence was a foregone conclusion at the end of the war it was simply too cost to maintain but Britain did try to keep up the payments on the the uh the Sterling balances so what I'm arguing here is that the allocation of costs and benefits Within and between India and Britain reflected more than a dominance of Southern gentle only capitalists we need to analyze shifting political calculations that changed over time now for the final minutes of the lecture I want to raise another area which I for which I could give an entire another lecture of the same length but I'll just mention this very very quickly the question here is what is going on is it globalization or is it imperialism and there were different views on on this how important is imperialism to the development of the British economy of the late later 19th and 20th Century one View is that globalization would have happened anyway that the cost of the empire were unnecessary formal control was unnecessary and that view was put forward by Adam Smith in 1776. same year as the American Declaration of Independence he said why pay for fighting to keep the American colonies it's much better we voluntarily give up I just have a trade treaty with them that would be more advantageous to everybody Richard Cobden it's a great Lancashire free Trader leader of the anti-corn law League said the same free trade he said bring stations together in peaceful exchange we don't need to have imperialism to get our foreign customers visiting our markets they're not not brought hither he said through fear of the power of British diplomats and that's the same argument made by modern historians Davidson hattenbach whom are referred they said the basic problem here is that the who is benefiting from the the Empire the cost of Defense that the white dominions said the Australians Were Free Riders they didn't need to have a Navy or an army because they had they had us to look to look after them and that the costs then meant a high level of Taxation within Britain which fell off upon the workers and if only we had given up the Empire British taxes they said could have been cut by 12 percent and we all know if we believe Dr quatang that if you cut taxes you have faster economic growth and you know this is absolutely right that in fact most overseas Capital did not go to the Empire it went to United States it went to Argentina and other countries so he said you don't need the Empire the money that is going overseas doesn't necessarily go to the Empire it goes to recent areas of settlement in temperate countries not into the the empire so on this view then you don't need the Empire that the benefits come from for example the Vesti family investing in meet in Argentina which benefits workers again it's not to say it's a genuinely capitalists it's investment in Grain production and transport and who loses from that landowners whose incomes dropped by 40 percent went stop by 40 to the late 19th century so the argument here is that you don't need to have investment overseas of course the alternative View of Joseph Chamberlain in the 1902 remember that date of Hobson is that you do needs it because Germany and the United States had Massive Internal markets much bigger than Britain itself so that in order to develop you need to have a modern system of protection we need to tell the form preference for the Empire and that would be the big Market that Britain needed now the Liberals remains committed to free trade they said that Imperial preference was would lead to waste it would lead to higher rents for the for the landowners and according to um Chamberlain they're going to solve social problems of unemployment by arguing that you would have a protected Home Market that would lead to Full Employment and they said no that's not true it leads a high food prices the liberal said remember you need to have social reform by redistribution well in the 1906 and 1910 elections it was the free traders who won free traded to prosperity and protectionism with Joe Chamberlain leading to poverty and in miseration but because of this changes in the interwar period Joe Chamberlain's son Neville introduces Imperial preference in 1932 so again attitudes change things change over this and at the end of the second world war during the second world wars and after the war it is argued by the labor government that you still you need to have Imperial preference because that's the only way in which we could get markets for our Goods at the end of the war so those arguments continue to be fought over so that takes me to a third possible argument here which is to say well okay perhaps you don't need the empire but even if you didn't have the empire and you only had globalization you would still need to have the Navy because the whole issue about the free trade system of of Cobden is you we would depend upon food imports so it's a great concern about food security therefore you would need to have the expensive British Navy anyway even without the empire so the cost of Defense wouldn't have been reduced there wouldn't have been a premium of cutting taxes if you got rid of the empire in any case are we sure that Britain was more taxed than France and Germany because France and Germany had conscripts if you add in the cost of taking away two people's two years of people's lives perhaps the cost of Taxation was actually higher than in Britain which didn't have conscription until the uh the wartime period and you should also of course take into account the view of the the supply of the troops coming from India during the first world war which was a massive return so okay the argument there is do you without Empire but with globalization did you need to have the cost of military defense well that takes me to a final view on this which is the view of the modern historian Nile Ferguson he said Empire was a jolly good thing because it spread modern values and it spread uh the the the um I quote the spontaneous action of markets Britain was spreading economic liberalism I quote the British Empire act as an agency for imposing free markets the rule of law investor protection and incorrupt government on a quarter of the world so he says globalization went with imperialism in the ugly word he has coined and globalization anglo-globalization now these arguments continue to be fought and argued the uh the World Bank for example has picked up on some of these arguments of Ferguson and they see that as a way of of spreading uh development it's a sort of effect new form of Western cultural imperialism my view is that both Cobden and Ferguson are misleading globalization was about power we shouldn't just be thinking about it as being Imperial direct rule power because if we were thinking about Argentina it's about the power of capital ownership what we call informal imperialism so you could have formal Rule and also informal rule if Britain owned the railways the banks in the land in uh Argentina did it really matter whether or not it was part of the direct rule form uh from from Britain so what I'm arguing in in this lecture is that the cost and benefits of the British Empire have always been disputed they were part of that debate in 1902 between Hobson and Chamberlain between neurology and others who supported Indian rule it was disputed within Britain as well as within the colonized areas so current debates do not reflect some sort of Rogue war on our heritage these issues are actually our heritage we need to understand the issues which are complex politics shift over time we need to analyze the interplay of different interest groups both within and between Britain and the Empire we need to see how would choices actually made we need to consider what was the result of formal imperialism what was the outcome of globalization and industrialization in either case the result was a great Divergence in the 19th century between core and periphery of the world economy a point I made in my first lecture this discrepancy a Divergence between core and perhaps the world economy continued even after decolonization it is only now within the last 25 years or so 30 years that it's being reversed that there is now a little convergence after the great Divergence could navaji have ever imagined that Tata now owns Jaguar Land Rover thank you [Applause] [Applause] thank you very much it's wonderful lecture as usual um just before I open questions of the floor one of the recurring themes of your talk is a sort of a small group of individuals Gathering wealth at the expense of a large population yeah so the word you never use throughout all this was greed and yet I just wondered how much that overlaps with many of the policies and sort of financial consequences of the decisions of individuals rather than of states well I think that that's right if we go back to our people like like this you've got inequality within India uh so there was there was complaints with an injured that people like this are being supported by as like um agents of British Imperials really uh that they are allies uh so that leads into inequality uh but you've also got the the issues Within within Britain of these people uh there is a massive debate with within within Britain at a time of uh Hobson who is supporting the introduction progressive tax so not 190 1909 1910 budgets a lot of Lloyd George um so the there are debates going on here about how these people have uh inordinate power but it's also I could pick up your point that these people actually then become the state uh what is the role of these people within the the government the the the city treasury Nexus um I think that there's a the point there is that yes these people becoming are very very rich but they were also quota realization that Lancashire as the votes so Bill Rubinstein who's had this great study of uh who owns wealth keeps saying that it was always the case in Britain that industrialists were not the richest people in the society it was the Rothschilds the bearings the landowners and that this is picked up by Keith Joseph who says look it's these people dominated we've got to get rid of these you've got to have the industrialists but in fact if you add together all the total ink wealth of the industrialists and their votes they have they have the power so they can push back so you do in fact have the 1909 1910 budgets which leads to Greater equality um and by 1945 really is that there has been a switch in in distribution of wealth so I'm not sure um I think you said at the beginning I think you said that for neurology despite him compiling this catalog of drain and arguing specifically against it I think you said that he wasn't out and out for Independence he was just for a behind a British influence so why wasn't he out and out for Independence well you you have to think about the um what is practical politics uh so when he started out he's basically trying to shame the British into giving um Indians a rule a role within the government of India wasn't at that point practical politics to demand Independence uh I think if you go into the 1930s of course the attitudes are going to be changing then he was dead of course um but but even then you you have um a debate going on over how to um about modernize and develop the Indian economy so you have the the Congress setting up um a sort of Planning Commission which then fails when the when the Congress leaders were put in prison and the Indian the British rules in India come forward with their own planning system and uh some of the industrialists who were part of the part of Empire come forward with what they call The Bombay plan so there's this debate going on there of can the British actually take over some of the views that the Congress have been developing to plan a developed economy and that then to stop Independence so there's and I think the interesting point there is all those those three pounds if you like are drawing on the same ideology of of of Fabian planning like the post-war labor government post second or labor government so I think there's a a dance going on here about at what point can you actually start to actually demand a complete in Independence uh nawaji at the beginning of the late 19th century uh very beginning of the 20th century it's not practical by the 1930s it might be by the by the Second World War I think from what I was I was saying those costs of the of of um paying off the debt that bid known to India means basically the most British politicians should say the the the the game's not worth a candle and what they want to do then I I didn't say this in in the lecture for lack of time they say we're going to invest in Africa instead that if we invest in Africa give up India invest in Africa that will then give us the the earnings we need uh uh to bounce the trade with um with the United States of America uh so but what they want to do still is to keep injured within the Commonwealth so I think is it a gradual process over time was simply wanting to have rural uh engines part of the British rule um thank you very much just to say that margin is coming back in the Autumn um to talk about paths to modernity Cold War decolonization and economic transitions in a series of three rather exciting lectures so I hope you'll join me in thanking Professor Martin Dawson for this evening [Applause]

Channel: Gresham College

Views: 93,268

Keywords: Gresham, Gresham College, Education, Lecture, Public, London, Debate, Academia, Knowledge, history, britain, economics, british empire, india, Queen Victoria, British Indian Empire, Naoroji, John A Hobson, Imperialism, Thomas Baring, Viceroy, Evelyn Baring, cloth, indian mill, handloom, Tata, Nagpur, Jamshedpur, cotton, zamindar, opium, salt, excise, tariffs, Bardoli satyagraha, vestey

Id: _3iQ3zJEIko

Length: 60min 36sec (3636 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/KagemasaUchiha]

Lemme give a short answer. The British!

[u/binaryduplicity]

Came to say this

[u/RainbowSprinkles3969]

Just as the US with its own share of territories.

[u/MrR_7882]

Wow, actual nuanced and fact-based arguments on a contentious topic of public discourse! Good find.