Speaker 1 (00:00:04):
In 1892, Dabai Naji was elected MP for Central Finsbury. He was the first Indian to enter the House of Commons. Naji was a So Sorian who, 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 pro to press for the Indian Civil Service to be open to Indians and 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 Holman where we now are Lord Salsbury. The conservative prime minister thought that no constituency and I quote, was ready to elect a black man. And there is Lord Salsbury, um, dojo Venice spurring, uh, uh, Navi, uh, uh, reference to, uh, Othello Lord's, uh, Navi, be pardon, uh, won the neighboring seat of Cent 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:01:46):
In 1901, he pulled together his writings in a famous book, poverty and Un British Rule. In this book, Naji attacked the hypocrisy of the British for claiming that they would rule India in the interest 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 it, that it is our earnest desire to administer in'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, Naji complained that these promises were broken with the result. And I quote that the present system of government is destructive and despotic to the Indians and un British and suicidal to Britain. At this stage, Navi 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 of British citizenship. And he referred to the freedom of press and speech. 

Speaker 1 (00:03:49):
But this is in a way, getting at the hypocrisy of the British. He said the current rule of India was un British. In what ways was it on 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 nec 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 India sold 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 drain he said, removed capital from India to Britain, which then gave Britain a monopoly of trade in industry, which further exploited and drained India. How he asked was 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:05:45):
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 prov were provided. He said, in India, as against the United States. In the United States, the workers were American and expenditure from loans coming from outside America to build a railways remained in the country. They bought American Iron Americans, um, Villa Locomotives. 

Speaker 1 (00:06:23):
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, uh, do their pensions back in England. The costs 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 were 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 resolved 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:07:36):
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, Hansen 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 a can by its despotism squeeze out more and more from the helpless taxpayer without mercy or without let or hindrance. 

Speaker 1 (00:09:10):
He went even further. He said that the English claimed to be free traders, you know, 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, these protection from British exports to get worse, India was paying for English British imperialism elsewhere in the world. You see on this slide, uh, Indian soldiers in the First World War Naji said that all the wars by which the British Indian em Paris 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 front tire frontier of India by which the in empire has been built up and maintained, has been exacted from the Indian people. Britain has spent nothing. There is the 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:09):
The overall result of this catalog of drains is that there were two Indias. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:18):
One, India was rich and prosperous. The India of British officials and capitalists who carry away enormous wealth. They could not understand the second India, the poverty stricken 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, and righteousness. 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. Uh, you can imagine, um, it caused, uh, 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:12:54):
But Indians had no say in the expenditure of revenues or in the good government of India, the British, he said, again, were hypocrites. They had a glorious struggle for constitutional representative government, the Civil War, that glorious revolution, the greater reform 1832. They urged this everywhere on other nations, but on the other hand, they maintained what he called a depoing, despotism themselves in India. And this was disastrous for India, sorry, England itself. It meant he 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 the additional training of the dis simulation 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 Ji 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 Ji, although it goes even further in arguing that there was a deliberate policy of de-industrialization by the British and going as far as a call for reparations from Britain to India. In other words, what I've just been talking about is current politics and not just history. 

Speaker 1 (00:15:07):
So there is one book published in 1901, part of this debate around the nature of the British Empire. I no 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 war published imperialism a study. So it was provoked by the poor war, which he thought was a terrible mistake. And also by the social problems of poverty and unemployment within Britain 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, he 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:17:14):
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, 

Speaker 1 (00:17:33):
Including 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 tribute from report then spent it to increase imperialism, this aggressive imperialism, which costs the taxpayer so dare he said, which is of so little value to the manufacturer. And the trader is a source of great gain to an 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 investments abroad. 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:18:41):
The rich were overs saving. They had so much money they could spend it all, they over saved. But because the poor people were so poor, they couldn't buy commodities buy goods. Therefore, the overs saving of the rich, the under consumption of the poor led to imperialism. The economic root 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 redistribute money from the rich over saving to the poor. Under consuming imperialism was a para distortion of the economy. So he said it is idle to attack imperialism as political expedience or policies unless the acts is laid at the economic root of the tree. And the classes for whose interest imperialism works, are shn of the surplus revenues which seek this outlet. So Ji saw two empire. 

Speaker 1 (00:20:00):
So, 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, uh, trades which were antagonistic to useful industry, a playground he said for socially reputable sports and entertainment. And these people here joined Ascot in 1910 were the supporters of imperialism and militarism. Meanwhile, in the north, a producer's England was based on industry in which well to do workers were engaged with skilled, uh, 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, um, influential historians, Peter Kane and Tony Hopkins used 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, former American Canadian, uh, wheat, those landowners intermarried with the, with the families of financiers looking for status. 

Speaker 1 (00:21:47):
They went to the same public schools. They went to Oxford, 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, uh, recent work of the historian used Hef Casis. 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 uh, 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 hardwoods of the Greenville families. Aras, the bearings bank funded the Louisiana purchase of the Midwest of the United States. They funded the United States cotton trade. They, uh, were involved in lungs to Argentina. But Thomas sparing the first ill Northbrook was Vice Roy of India. Uh, his relative Evelin first Ill Kromer worked as his private secretary, uh, went on basically to rule Egypt after the loans that the British had made to Egypt were, were, 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 Hueck Mamon. The Pursuit of Empire say that the owners of the overseas investment were predominantly from the south of England. So you see that London, uh, shareholders and sample of companies, uh, London was a major investment, imperial, uh, but not in domestic industry, whereas non metropolitan domestic industry, not in the empire. So they say there are these two groups of capitalists here, 

Speaker 1 (00:24:00):
And they go on to argue that the costs of the empire fell upon taxpayers in general who paid for excessive defense costs. Whereas the benefits went to the social group that Hobson was talking about, the consumers England of the South. Now, if we were to put together Ji and Hobson, we immediately have an answer to the question that my lecture poet, 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, Landons, and 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 metropolitan, 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 and was much more complicated than our two link Victorian. And Ed Edwardian liberals assumed, let me turn, first of all, to the politics of the Raj, the politics of India. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:40):
In my first election, this series, I argued that Britain in the 18th century had a trade deficit with India. India was selling fine quality Muslims to, uh, Britain. Britain was actually draining wealth to India. He 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 

Speaker 1 (00:26:17):
Has a looking for India's point of view, has a trade deficit of 60 million pounds with 90 kingdom. The United Kingdom has a deficit with continental deal for 45 million pounds, and with the United States of 50 million pounds. The only major area of which Britain has a trade surplus is India. So that was absolutely critical to, uh, Britain's ability to run a global economy in the late 19th century. Now, why did that come about? The book in Glos Em, empire by Thul, which I uh mentioned makes some astonishing and incorrect claims that, that there was a drain in the 18th century from Indeed of Britain. No, that's not true. The drain in the 18th century was the, was the other way. It turns around. He also argues that the British East Ninja Company were systematically destroying looms and cutting off the thumbs of weavers to stop them weaving. Well, actually, no, these D company made its money by selling Muslims to England. The people who wanted to stop industrialization in India, of course, were the Lancaster 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, gentleman capitalists, were losing out to the laquer cotton trade. So it's a bit more complicated than that. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:47):
The main reason why, uh, India Deindustrialized 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, Lancaster could compete within India. And that deindustrialization 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% in 1800 to 10% in 1900. But the Indian textile industry did not entirely collapse. It survived by cutting prices using machine 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, sares for women mixing together gold dir 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:29:10):
Farmers were unable to sustain so many workers, and there was a loss of supplementary income from weaving to compensate farmers in terms of hardship of 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 were also signs of a reversal of cotton production in India. So you see the percentage of imports of total consumption, India 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 th is about, about what is happening. By the late 19th century, cotton mills were developing in Bombay using cheap labor, but also machinery, which is actually more modern than was Bob was being used in Lancashire. 

Speaker 1 (00:30:16):
The keepers here is another s orian tarter, um, who built the cotton mills in Nagpur. And then his son went on to build a massive, uh, tarter steelworks, uh, which you see, you see there. And also hydro electric, uh, power and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Let's also, and I'll go on to talk about this again in a moment, a rise of jute, spinning and weaving in cucuta in part finance and operated by British firms. This development of these industries, jute and cotton, is gonna have a major impact on politics within Britain itself. Okay, I'll come back to that in a moment. Now, how was the drain, the deficit deficits that I've been talking about, the costs of supporting, uh, all the troops in Britain and overseas, how was that going to be paid for? Well, n was right Britain, uh, Indian troops were being sent overseas. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:21):
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 Rui was silver based, which is depreciating against the gold based pound. You may remember the importance of being earnest when Ms. Prism tells her charge, you will read your political economy in my absence, the chapter on the fall of the Rupe. You may admit it is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side. Well, people at the time realized actually, that's not just a joke. That is true. It did have a melodramatic side as the value of the rupe was dropping. You need to have more taxes to pay the home charges, which were denominated in gold-based sterling that causes political problems in England. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:31):
But also the fall in the value of the rupe means that Indians trying to buy laquer goods valued in gold, how to pay more. So it's hitting the laich cotton textile industry. Now, who is going to win out in these, these debates? This is difficult political decisions both in India and in Britain. If you were the Vice Roy of India, you don't want to stir up problem within India. You're concerned that increasing taxes to pay the drain, which is getting higher because of the rupe question, will lead to problems of resistance if you increase the land tax or salt tax, the land tax with 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:33:45):
In 1793, you gave a permanent right to hold the land to a zandar like this elegant man here for paying a fixed amount to the British government or to the Indian, the British government in India, the peasant cultivators on a huge estate would lose their rights. The idea of the British government was if you gave a person like this absolute right to the, 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 Stu Mill and John James Stewart, John Stewart Mill, both of whom work for these ginger 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 a different views within Britain creating different sorts of societies within India. So the zinar against the riot, the peasant, and that actually did lead the riot system to greater prosperity in the Punjab than in the Zinari system of Bengal. 

Speaker 1 (00:35:39):
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, uh, English, uh, cotton producers. So that is going to create a problem within India, sorry, beg pardon? 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, uh, 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 a gentleman capitalist like the Vice Roy, the easiest thing you can do is to impose tariffs. On the other hand, if you are the Secretary of State for India, a British politician sitting in the cabinet, your concern is winning a general election and which was the area of the country, which was a swing area, which would go from conserved to liberals, Lancaster. So the gentleman capitalists might have the money, they didn't have the votes. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:18):
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 tariffs 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 10, a hundred 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, 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, Lancaster is going to lose out. And of course, Lancaster, in any case, was now the swing area that was, um, uh, 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:38:55):
Winston Churchill had been MP for Oldham in a cotton textile area at the end of the first World War. He was MP for Dundee. Dundee was based upon, um, Jude spinning. This is the 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 he is a free trader 

Speaker 1 (00:39:36):
In the liberal government. Before the war, he had introduced trade board acts and minimum wage legislation, which applied to, uh, co uh, Jude 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, uh, no, we don't want to take away the minimum wage legislation. Uh, they go off and vote labor. Um, and the, um, and manufacturers, uh, are not satisfied. By fact, he's a free trade and doesn't want tariffs. He loses the election in 1922. Uh, he goes to the South where these issues are not gonna be so important. This issue comes back again to affect, uh, Winston Churchill. In the second World War, as just before the second World Wars broke out, it is agreed that if any Indian troops are used overseas in a forthcoming war, Britain would pay. Burma have been separated from India in 1937, Japan invades Burma, who is going to pay for the troops in Burma Britain. So at the end of the war, there's a massive problem about, uh, Britain has to pay for that. The sterling balances blocked sterling balances. Winston Churchill said, well, we shouldn't pay. John Maynard Cains, uh, at Threaten Woods Conference also said, well, 

Speaker 1 (00:41:21):
We can't afford it. But it was realized by the British government that they could not break that, uh, obligation. 

Speaker 1 (00:41:31):
Leo a Marie, the Secretary of State for India, a lead conservative and supporter of, uh, imperialism, criticized Winston Churchill. He said, when driving to the station to catch a life or death train, I should hardly think that you would tell the cabby man, you have no intention of paying when you get there. So again, there's this big issue that, that is, that is going, going on here about who is going to pay for this contribution. Indian independence was a foregone conclusion at the end of the war. Uh, it was simply two 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 capitalists. We need to analyze shifting political calculations that changed over time. Now, for the final, uh, minutes of, of a lecture, I want to raise another area, which I, for which I could give an entire another lecture o of the same length. But I'll just mention this very, very quickly. 

Speaker 1 (00:42:49):
The question here is, what is going on? Is it globalization or is it imperialism? And there are different views, uh, 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've 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 view 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 him. Uh, that would be more advantageous to everybody. Richard Cobden, the great Lancashire free trader leader of the Antico Law League, said the same free trade. He said, bring stations together in peaceful exchange. We don't need to have, um, imperialism to get our foreign customers visiting our markets. 

Speaker 1 (00:44:07):
They're not, not brought hit, he said, through fear of the power of British diplomats. And that's the same argument made by modern historians, Davis Manhattan, back to whom I referred. They said, the basic problem here is that we, the who is benefiting from the, the, the empire, the casa of defense, that the white dominions, he said the Australians were free riders. They didn't need to have a Navy or an army cuz they had, they had us to look, to look after them. And that the costs then went a high level of taxation within Britain, which fell upon the workers. And if only we had given up the Empire, British taxes, they said could have been cut by 12%. And we all know if we believe Dr. Quang, that if you cut taxes, you have faster economic growth. And Lord, 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, and other countries. 

Speaker 1 (00:45:15):
So I 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. Uh, the, the benefits come from, for example, uh, the Vesti family investing in meat in Argentina, which benefits workers. Again, it's not necessarily to gentleman capitalists. It's investment in grain production and transport. And who loses from that? Landowners incomes dropped by 40%. Grants dropped by 40% in 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 need it because Germany and the United States had massive internal markets, much bigger than vit itself. So that in order to develop, you need to have a modern system of protection, the town reform preference of the empire. 

Speaker 1 (00:46:36):
And that would be the big market that, uh, Britain needed. Now, the liberals remained committed to free trade. They said that imperial preference was lead, would lead to waste, it would lead to, uh, higher rents for the, for the landowners. Uh, 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. Lead to high food prices. The liberals said, but you need to have social reform by redistribution. Well, in the 1906 and 1910 elections, it was the free traders, uh, who won free traded to prosperity and protectionism with Joe Chamberlain leading to poverty and reservation. But of course, this changes in the inter-war period. Joe Chamber's son Neville introduces imperial preference in, uh, 1932. So again, attitudes change, things change, um, 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. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:10):
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 would, we would depend upon food imports. So there's 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 the wartime period. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:21):
And you should also 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 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, uh, 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 incorrect government on a quarter of the world. So he says globalization went with imperialism in the ugly word. He has coined Ang globalization. Anglo globalization. 

Speaker 1 (00:50:35):
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, uh, way of, of spreading, uh, development. It's a sort of, it's like 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. Cuz 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 from, uh, from from Britain? So what time 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 Narai and others who supported Indian rule. 

Speaker 1 (00:52:10):
It was disputed within Britain as well as within the colonized areas. So current debates do not reflect some sort of woke 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 were 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 per the world colony continued even after decolonization. It is only now within the last 25 years or so, 30 years that is being reversed, that there is a little convergence after the great divergence could nav ak have ever imagined that Tarter now owns Jaguar Land Rover. Thank you. 

Speaker 2 (00:53:49):
Thank you very much, Martin. It's wonderful lecture as usual. Um, just before I open questions to the floor, one of the recurring themes of your talk is a sort of a small group of individuals gathering wealth mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but the expense of a large population. Yeah. So the word you never used throughout all this was greed. And yet I just wondered how much that overlaps with many of the pol policies and sort of financial consequences of the decisions of individuals rather than of states. 

Speaker 1 (00:54:21):
Well, I think that that's right. If we go back to, um, our, um, 

Speaker 1 (00:54:29):
People like, like this that you, you got inequality within India. Uh, so there was, there was complaints within India that people like this are being supported by as like, um, agents of the British Imperials really, uh, that they, they are allies. Uh, so that leads into, into inequality. Uh, but you also got the, the issues within, within Britain of these people. Uh, there is the, the massive debate with within, within Britain as a time of, uh, Hobson who is supporting the pro introduction progressive tax. So 19, 19 0 9, 19 10 budgets of lot of Lloyd George. Um, so the, the, there are debates going on here about how these people have, uh, inordinate power. Uh, but it's also, I can 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, the city Treasury nexus? 

Speaker 1 (00:55:38):
Um, and I think that there's a, the point there is that yes, these people becoming are very, very rich, but there were also caught a realization that Lancashire has the votes. So Bill Rubenstein, 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 Ross Childs, the bearings, the landowners. And that this is picked up by Keith Joseph who says, look, it's these people dominated. We've gotta get rid of these, you've gotta have the industrialists. But in fact, if you add together all the total ink wealth of the, and their votes, they have, they have the power so they can push back. So you do in fact have the 19 0 9, 19 10 budgets, which leads to greater equality. Um, and by 1945, uh, really is that there has been a switch in, in, in distribution of wealth. So I'm not sure. No, it's getting there. Yeah. 

Speaker 3 (00:56:46):
Um, I think you said at the beginning, I think you said that for Ji, uh, despite him compiling this catalog of drain and arguing vociferously against it, I think you said that he wasn't out and out for independence, he was just for a kinder British influence. So, so why wasn't he out on, out for independence? 

Speaker 1 (00:57:05):
Well, you, you, you have to think about the, um, what is practical politics. Uh, so when he started out, he, he was basically trying to shame the British into giving, um, engines a rule, uh, a role within the government of India. It wasn't at that point practical politics to demand independence. Um, I think if you go into the 1930s, of course attitudes are gonna be changing. Then he, 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, a a planning commission, um, which then fails when the, when the Congress leaders were, were put in prison. And the Indian, the British rulers in India come forward with their own planning system. And, uh, some of the industrialists who were part of the tar empire come forward with what they call the Bombay plan. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:16):
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 and develop the economy and that then to stop independence. So there's, and I think the interesting point there is all those, those three plans, if you like, are drawing on the same ideology of, of, of Fabian planning, like the postwar labor government post-second World War labor government. So I think there's a, a dance going on here about at what point can you actually start to actually demand complete in, in, in independence. Uh, ji at the begin, at the late 19th century, uh, very beginning of the 20th century, it's not practical by the 19th thirties, 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 forbid knowns to India means basically the, the most British, uh, politicians say the, 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, 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 India within the commonwealth. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:49):
So I think is a gradual process over time. Nji, uh, was simply wanting to have rule, uh, engines, part of the British rule. 

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
<laugh>. Um, thank you very much, Martin. Uh, just to say that, uh, Martin's coming back in the autumn, um, to talk about past 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, daunting for this evening.