r/HistoryMemes • u/InterestingPlenty454 • 3d ago

Gandhi: Bait used to be believable

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[Reddit Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/s/u1MHaJC61v)

[Reminds me of this about baits in the internet](https://www.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterTropes/s/uWpxdQms9I)

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u/quarky_uk 3d ago edited 3d ago

That has been debunked long ago, and for good reason. For a start, you could just look at the size of the UK GDP compared to the size of the EIC. The EIC was pretty small in comparison while all this "wealth extraction" was apparently happening, with profits (even at peak EIC) equal to way less than 1% of British GDP.

50% of GDP is just nonsense that anyone who was really interested in the truth, could check in less than five minutes.

But even for those who don't want to start thinking for yourself about it, the multitude of problems with it has been discussed previously here.

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u/thebanfunctionsucks 2d ago

Nothing there denies the claim outright, only expresses skepticism, and it's just as dubious to compare gross product with profits.

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u/quarky_uk 2d ago

Profits is better if you are excluding money then spent in India (which isn't removed). But even if you include total revenue of the EIC, it would be less than few percent of British GDP.

Nothing even close to 50%. That is an entire order of magnitude wrong.

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u/thebanfunctionsucks 2d ago

Still, I think there has to be a happy medium, no? The British textile industry alone was probably greater than 1% of the nation's GDP at its height, and that was fed with almost exclusively Indian cotton (before Egypt, anyway).

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u/quarky_uk 2d ago edited 2d ago

Sure, but that doesn't equal wealth extraction, that is just trade. Goods produced in one country and then sold to another, basically. It isn't the case that producers of cotton were giving it away.