Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860-1912Historians have so far made few attempts to assess directly the costs and benefits of Britain's investment in empire. This book presents answers to some of the key questions about the economics of imperialism: how large was the flow of finance to the empire? How great were the profits on empire investment? What were the social costs of maintaining the empire? Who received the profits, and who bore the costs? The authors show that colonial finance did not dominate British capital markets; returns from empire investment were not high in comparison to earnings in the domestic and foreign sectors; there is no evidence of continued exploitative profits; and empire profits were earned at a substantial cost to the taxpayer. They depict British imperialism as a mechanism to effect an income transfer from the tax-paying middle class to the elites in which the ownership of imperial enterprise was heavily concentrated, with some slight net transfer to the colonies in the process. |
Contents
colonial taxpayer | 145 |
the nondefense | 166 |
Commons | 253 |
Imperium economicus in retrospect | 301 |
Official documents | 319 |
Company records | 326 |
Notes | 338 |
| 365 | |
| 389 | |
Other editions - View all
Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British ... Lance E. Davis,Robert A. Huttenback No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
Africa agriculture and extractive American anti-imperial appears Australia average AVG(d Bank Blue Books Brewery Britain businesspeople Canada capital CLASS TOTAL Colliery Colonial Office colonies with responsible colony-weighted commercial companies costs Crown Agents decade defense dependent colonies dependent Empire developed countries domestic earned economic elites estimates example expenditures figure finance firms foreign sector foreign-developed funds Gladstone Group Subtotal Ibid imperial income India Office India PSts FD industrial interest investment investors issues J. A. Hobson Joseph Chamberlain Labor Lancashire land later less Liberals loan London Manufacturing Mauritius measure military million Misc Miscellaneous overseas Papers Parliament percent political Private Govt profits PSts FD FU railroads Railway rate of return responsible government revenues self-governing colonies shares South South Africa subsidy substantial TABLE tariffs Treasury to Colonial UK FOR EMP underdeveloped countries United Kingdom Western Australia wrote Zealand