UK’s Richest 10% Took Half of Colonial India’s Wealth—Enough to Carpet London 4 Times

UK’s Richest 10% Took Half of Colonial India’s Wealth: Rights group Oxfam's latest report, released on Monday, stated that the UK took $64.82 trillion from colonial India from 1765 to 1900, with the richest 10 per cent of Britons taking $33.8 trillion.

"This would be enough to carpet the surface area of London in British pound 50 notes almost four times over," it said.

Oxfam in its report "Takers, not Makers" said a significant number of the richest Britons could directly or indirectly trace their wealth from compensation from the government paid to the richest enslavers during the abolition of the system.

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The group added that the newly formed middle class in the UK is the second-largest beneficiary of wealth extracted from colonial India for over 100 years.

“After the richest 10 per cent, who received 52 per cent of this income, the new middle class received a further 32 per cent of income,” Oxfam said.

Textiles and Drugs

The group also pointed the blame on colonialism for destroying India's industrial production by virtue of restrictive protectionist policies against textiles.

“Besides, in 1750, the Indian subcontinent accounted for approximately 25 per cent of global industrial output. However, by 1900 this figure had precipitously declined to a mere 2 per cent,” it noted.

Oxfam also alleged that the Dutch and British colonial states were "drug pushers" who used opium trade to solidify their rule over colonies. It accused the British of "industrial scale" poppy cultivation in poorer areas of eastern India and exporting it to China, eventually triggering the Opium War and China's so-called 'century of humiliation.'

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‘Modern corporations resemble East India Company’

According to the report, it cited several studies and research papers in drawing the conclusion that today, multinational corporations are the product of colonialism.

The group cited as example the English East India Company, which cakewalked away with "many colonial crimes" and became "a law unto itself" as a pioneer of exploitative practices later followed by modern multinational corporations.

“Legacies of inequality and pathologies of plunder, pioneered during the time of historical colonialism, continue to shape modern lives,” the report said, claiming that wages in the Global South are 87 to 95% lower than wages paid to work of equal skill in the Global North.

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