In
Groot-Brittannië (GB) gaat nog steeds het verhaal rond, dat GB nooit iets
heeft verdiend aan de kolonisatie van India en daarom was het een
gunst dat GB zo lang als kolonisator in India bleef..... Uit onderzoek zou blijken dat 50%
van de Britten deze smerige leugen gelooft......
Wie een
klein beetje de economie van kolonisators in het verleden onder de
loep heeft genomen, weet dat men nooit een kolonie had behouden, als
daar niet dik geld aan te verdienen was, met uitzondering van strategisch belangrijke gebieden voor die kolonisators, neem Gibraltar....
Onderzoek
van Utsa Patnaik, gepubliceerd op Columbia University Press, toont
dan ook het tegendeel aan van het sprookje dat India de Britse
kolonisator alleen maar geld heeft gekost. Integendeel: GB heeft bij
elkaar 45 biljoen dollar gestolen van de Indiase bevolking, dit in
de periode van 1765 tot 1938. Die 45 biljoen is overigens 17 keer het
huidige Bruto Binnenlands Product van GB......
Via een
smerige systeem wist GB haar winsten zo groot mogelijk te maken: in
1765 nam de East India Company (EIC) de handel over in India, tot die
tijd betaalde GB netjes in zilver voor de producten, echter kort na
die overname van de handel door de EIC, voerde men belastingen in en
van één derde van die belastingopbrengsten uit India, werden de goederen gekocht in
India, ofwel GB kreeg de producten vanaf die tijd gratis, immers de
bevolking betaalde zelf voor die producten via de belastingen........
Na import in GB, exporteerde GB een deel van die goederen naar de rest van Europa, daarmee kon GB de benodigde goederen betalen die nodig waren voor de industrialisatie, zoals staal.... Ofwel GB verkocht in feite gestolen goederen en dat voor een fikse prijs, anders gezegd: dubbele winsten van elk 100%.....
Middels de
belastingen die in India werden geroofd, bekostigde GB ook haar
koloniale oorlogen, zoals die tegen China, bovendien werd uit die belasting zoals gezegd de
industrialisatie van GB en haar kolonies Canada en Australië
betaald..... Niet de stoommachine maakte GB groot maar het gestolen
geld van de Indiase bevolking!
Van 1870
tot 1920 heeft GB met opzet een hongersnood veroorzaakt in India* die aan
tientallen miljoenen Indiërs het leven heeft gekost, ofwel deze
mensen werden vermoord middels één van de ergste oorlogsmisdaden, om
niet te zeggen een grove misdaad tegen de menselijkheid: het uithongeren van een bevolking.......... (zie de foto in het hieronder opgenomen artikel)
Uiteraard
heeft ook GB als Nederland voor het Indonesische volk, niet haar excuses aangeboden aan het volk
van India voor de vreselijke misdaden en uitbuiting, laat staan dat
het herstelbetalingen heeft gedaan........
Het
volgende artikel komt van Black Agenda Report, eerder gepubliceerd op Al Jazeera en Information Clearing House (voor links naar die webpagina's, zie onderaan in het volgende artikel):
How
Britain Stole $45 Trillion From India And Lied About It
British
colonizers turned a scam for defrauding peasants into a parasitical
relationship that made England rich and impoverished a
subcontinent.
“$45
trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic
product of the United Kingdom today.”
There
is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonization
of India --
as horrible as it may have been -- was not of any major economic
benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India
was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for
so long -- the story goes -- was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.
New
research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik -- just published by
Columbia University Press -- deals a crushing blow to this narrative.
Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade,
Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45
trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.
It's
a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than
the total annual gross domestic product of the United
Kingdom today.
How
did this come about?
It
happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period,
Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and
paid for them in the normal way -- mostly with silver -- as they did
with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after
the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and
established a monopoly over Indian trade.
“The
re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from
Europe which were essential to Britain's industrialization.”
Here's
how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in
India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a
third) to
fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words,
instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British
traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and
weavers using money that had just been taken from them.
It
was a scam -- theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware
of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was
not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been
the same person, they surely would have smelled a rat.
Some
of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were
re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to
finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials
like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain's
industrialization. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in
large part on this systematic theft from India.
On
top of this, the British were able to sell the stolen goods to other
countries for much more than they "bought" them for in the
first place, pocketing not only 100 percent of the original value of
the goods but also the markup.
After
the British Raj took over in 1847, colonizers added a special new
twist to the tax-and-buy system. As the East India Company's monopoly
broke down, Indian producers were allowed to export their goods
directly to other countries. But Britain made sure that the payments
for those goods nonetheless ended up in London.
“The
Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft
from India.”
How
did this work? Basically, anyone who wanted to buy goods from India
would do so using special Council Bills -- a unique paper currency
issued only by the British Crown. And the only way to get those bills
was to buy them from London with gold or silver. So traders would pay
London in gold to get the bills, and then use the bills to pay Indian
producers. When Indians cashed the bills in at the local colonial
office, they were "paid" in rupees out of tax revenues --
money that had just been collected from them. So, once again, they
were not in fact paid at all; they were defrauded.
Meanwhile,
London ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone
directly to the Indians in exchange for their exports.
This
corrupt system meant that even while India was running an impressive
trade surplus with the rest of the world -- a surplus that lasted for
three decades in the early 20th century -- it showed up as a deficit
in the national accounts because the real income from India's exports
was appropriated in
its entirety by Britain.
Some
point to this fictional "deficit" as evidence that India
was a liability to Britain. But exactly the opposite is true. Britain
intercepted enormous quantities of income that rightly belonged to
Indian producers. India was the goose that laid the golden egg.
Meanwhile, the "deficit" meant that India had no option but
to borrow from Britain to finance its imports. So the entire Indian
population was forced into completely unnecessary debt to their
colonial overlords, further cementing British control.
“London
ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone
directly to the Indians.”
Britain
used the windfall from this fraudulent system to fuel the engines of
imperial violence -- funding the invasion of China in
the 1840s and the suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857. And
this was on top of what the Crown took directly from Indian taxpayers
to pay for its wars. As Patnaik points out, "the cost of all
Britain's wars of conquest outside Indian borders were charged always
wholly or mainly to Indian revenues."
And
that's not all. Britain used this flow of tribute from India to
finance the expansion of capitalism in Europe and regions of European
settlement, like Canada and Australia. So not only the
industrialization of Britain but also the industrialization of much
of the Western world was facilitated by extraction from the colonies.
Patnaik
identifies four distinct economic periods in colonial India from 1765
to 1938, calculates the extraction for each, and then compounds at a
modest rate of interest (about 5 percent, which is lower than the
market rate) from the middle of each period to the present. Adding it
all up, she finds that the total drain amounts to $44.6 trillion.
This figure is conservative, she says, and does not include the debts
that Britain imposed on India during the Raj.
These
are eye-watering sums. But the true costs of this drain cannot be
calculated. If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and
foreign exchange earnings in development - as Japan did
- there's no telling how history might have turned out differently.
India could very well have become an economic powerhouse. Centuries
of poverty and suffering could have been prevented.
“The
cost of all Britain's wars of conquest outside Indian borders were
charged always wholly or mainly to Indian revenues."
All
of this is a sobering antidote to the rosy narrative promoted by
certain powerful voices in Britain. The conservative historian Niall
Ferguson has claimed that British rule helped "develop"
India. While he was prime minister, David Cameron asserted that
British rule was a net help to India.
This
narrative has found considerable traction in the popular imagination:
according to a 2014 YouGov poll, 50 percent of people in Britain
believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies.
Yet
during the entire 200-year history of British rule in India, there
was almost no increase in per capita income. In fact, during the last
half of the 19th century - the heyday of British intervention --
income in India collapsed by half. The average life expectancy of
Indians dropped by a fifth from 1870 to 1920. Tens of millions died
needlessly of policy-induced famine.
Britain
didn't develop India. Quite the contrary -- as Patnaik's work makes
clear -- India developed Britain.
What
does this require of Britain today? An apology? Absolutely.
Reparations? Perhaps -- although there is not enough money in all of
Britain to cover the sums that Patnaik identifies. In the meantime,
we can start by setting the story straight. We need to recognize that
Britain retained control of India not out of benevolence but for the
sake of plunder and that Britain's industrial rise didn't emerge sui
generis from the steam engine and strong institutions, as our
schoolbooks would have it, but depended on violent theft from other
lands and other peoples.
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* India dat destijds veel groter was, dus inclusief: Pakistan, Oost-Pakistan dat nu Bangladesh wordt genoemd en Ceylon, nu Sri Lanka genaamd.
