The Cost of Colonialism

With colonialism debates raging worldwide, when it comes to India, a whole spectrum of Empire-defenders—apologists, cheerleaders and full-blown racial supremacists—face off against outlandish claims of trillions owed and obsessions with stolen precious artefacts. Yet where is the complete and rigorous economic case against Britain?

This book offers a comprehensive account detailing the real cost of British rule on the subcontinent: the catastrophic, centuries-long stagnation of Indian living standards. In 1947, at independence, about 400 million people in undivided India lived on less than $1,000 per year—a third of the global average income, and just an eleventh of the UK average. To reach British income levels, India would have needed to add an economy equivalent in size to half the world.

The Cost of Colonialism combines historical narratives and characters with hard data from the archives, explaining how and why India fell so staggeringly far behind during the British era, and why the British failed so spectacularly in growing the economy, when a more prosperous India would have been in their interests. Assessing what life had been like previously, under the Mughals, and how living standards improved after independence, Samir Patil delivers a damning indictment of the Empire.