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>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 pu

by amvalo 8y ago

>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. This sounds needlessly circuitous. Money is fungible, so how is this different from saying the British overtaxing them? The actual book this article refers to doesn't seem to push such a weird argument (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dispossession-deprivation-and-development/9788193732915 https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dispossession-deprivation-and-...).

sandworm101 8y ago
Ya, sound far worse than it was. I'd phrase it more along the lines of saying "one third of collected taxes were re-spent in the country". A government buying services from local people, rather than importing it from abroad, is not a bad thing. I think the other two thirds, the part not spent within India, was a far greater problem. That was the 'stolen' money, the money removed from the country.
shripadk 8y ago
> This sounds needlessly circuitous. Money is fungible, so how is this different from saying the British overtaxing them? Because the British never spent their own hard earned money. It isn't fungible when you take someone's money from one hand and return back a small amount with the other hand without doing any measurable amount of work to have earned the money in the first place. How hard is that to understand? As a counter, would you be okay with your Government taking a portion of your money as tax and using only a small portion of it for your benefit and keeping the rest to be distributed amongst the elected representatives? Obviously not. This has nothing to do with overtaxation because I am sure people wouldn't have resisted if that money was reused for common good. But it wasn't the case. The money was used to fill up British coffers to be used in fighting World Wars (for which by the way, Indian soldiers were forced to take part in with not much recognition). By the way, the Empire taxed everything. They did not even spare Salt! That should put some perspective.

by amvalo 8y ago

sandworm101 8y ago

Ya, sound far worse than it was. I'd phrase it more along the lines of saying "one third of collected taxes were re-spent in the country". A government buying services from local people, rather than importing it from abroad, is not a bad thing. I think the other two thirds, the part not spent within India, was a far greater problem. That was the 'stolen' money, the money removed from the country.

shripadk 8y ago

> This sounds needlessly circuitous. Money is fungible, so how is this different from saying the British overtaxing them? Because the British never spent their own hard earned money. It isn't fungible when you take someone's money from one hand and return back a small amount with the other hand without doing any measurable amount of work to have earned the money in the first place. How hard is that to understand? As a counter, would you be okay with your Government taking a portion of your money as tax and using only a small portion of it for your benefit and keeping the rest to be distributed amongst the elected representatives? Obviously not. This has nothing to do with overtaxation because I am sure people wouldn't have resisted if that money was reused for common good. But it wasn't the case. The money was used to fill up British coffers to be used in fighting World Wars (for which by the way, Indian soldiers were forced to take part in with not much recognition). By the way, the Empire taxed everything. They did not even spare Salt! That should put some perspective.