The end of the British Raj resulted in a net economic loss for Britain
the verdict
INSUFFICIENT LEANING
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
4 sources for · 0 against
AS REPORTEDno primary record reached; this is what the reporting says
Historical sources indicate that India was central to Britain's balance of payments, trade, and multilateral settlements, and that losing the Raj was considered a severe blow to British world power, but the retrieved records provide only partial support regarding a quantified net economic loss.
The paradox of the authoritarian rule of the Indian Raj at the heart of Britain's liberal empire was one that ran continuously through the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism. Both as the unpaid arsenal of Eastern expansion and defence, and as the essential stop-gap to Britain's multilateral pattern of trade, India was the necessary if incongruous adjunct of Liberal England, supporting the doctrines of progress at home on the basis of the autocratic control of its British-born hierophants over the numberless ‘contented masses’ of the Indian countryside. The resulting contrast between the increasingly self-governing white dominions, and the Indian maverick upholding in chains the very fabric of the empire, was also reflected in the political thinking of the motherland itself, by way of the stresses and contradictions which the conditions of the Raj's existence served to create within the liberal framework of the Victorian intellectual world. At the core of the Victorian liberal empire stood the strictly paternalistic government of the Raj in India; at the centre of the ‘benevolent despotism’ that British rule in the subcontinent adopted stood the steel frame of the Indian Civil Service, ‘much more of a government corporation than of a purely civil service’ and the creator as much as the executor of British policy there.
During the Scramble for Africa, Britain gained much of Africa, especially in the south. By the early 20th century, the economies of Germany and the United States had begun catching up to Britain, especially byindustrialisation. Britain allowed Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to be "self-governing dominions" by the time of the World War I. They could now pass their own laws in most matters and became independent countries in 1931. World War I weakened Europe. Though the British Empire had been the most powerful economy before the war, it was quickly surpassed by the United States as the greatest industrial power after the war. In World War II, Japan took the colonies of Britain and other European countries in Southeast Asia. The Allies eventually defeated Japan and took back their colonies, but Britain's prestige in Asia was damaged, which caused the Empire to decline more quickly.[10]
The British Raj included the whole of the Indian subcontinent.[11] The independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 was the first and most important step in decolonisation. In the following decade, Britain also gave independence to most of the territories of the British Empire.
# Did the end of the British Raj in India create an economic loss for Britain?
Tags: 20th-century, india, economy, british-empire, united-kingdom
- Score: 38
- Views: 3448
- Answers: 3
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: Bravo (1067 rep)
- Asked: 2012-03-20
- Edited: 2014-11-16
- Site: history
## Question
I know the economic downturn of the World War and the victory of the Labour Party played some role in Britain deciding to quit India. Did GB have any serious economic implications because of this? There were a lot of Britons employed in various sectors in India. Did the quitting cause large-scale unemployment and downturn of British economy? How was the common public's reaction to this?
## Answers
### Answer by E1Suave (score: 29 [ACCEPTED])
To begin, the following passage from Britain, the Commonwealth and the End of Empire by Dr John Darwin discusses the "staggering blow" Great Britain felt after granting independence to India.
...
Repairing Britain
The huge sense of relief at a more or less dignified exit, and much
platitudinous rhetoric, disguised the fact that the end of the Raj was
a staggering blow for British world power. Britain had lost the colony
that had prov
Britain and India between the Wars | Modern Asian Studies | Cambridge Core
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# Britain and India between the Wars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
John Gallagher and
Anil Seal
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## Extract
In the nineteenth century, the British succeeded in deriving growing benefits from their Indian territories. With dominion firmly established, and the colonial connection beginning to take its modern shape, India came to fit less awkwardly with British economic interests. India now became Britain's best customer for her most important industry, a useful supplier of raw materials, a safe field for capital investment, a crucial element in her balance of payments and key to the multilateral system of settlements which sustained the continued expansion of her world trade.The pattern of trade and investment, which brought such signal benefits
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