> I am not saying that they were not exploited. But they went from being among the richest to being among the poorer not because of that but because Europe (and

> I am not saying that they were not exploited. But they went from being among the richest to being among the poorer not because of that but because Europe (and the US) progressed and industrialised while they didn't. It's not a loss of wealth, it's absence of growth. This is where I disagree. Because it very much was a loss of wealth [0]. As for growth, would the East India Company or the British empire after it allow India to grow to a degree they could challenge them or gain independence? We know that they didn't, and we know they fought to suppress rebellions, pit local factions against each other, and hold on to power over the region for as long as possible. > They would not have fared better in that respect without colonisation/aggression when you look at the political and social state of India and China at the time, and they would probably have stayed the way they were and not evolved. Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to know the counterfactual. But what we do know is that they were not "modernized" by Britain out of the goodness of their heart. And it was not done in a way that had the well being of Indians as the primary concern, but that of Britain. [0]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-st...