Industrial revolution was funded by the looting of Bengal

*1.  Teresa Hayter, **The Creation of World Poverty *(Pluto *1990*, 2nd
edition):

[pg 45] "*The arrival of the Bengal loot in London soon after (the Battle of
Plassey 1757) coincided with the beginning of the industrial revolution in
Britain. It has been estimated that the total British plunder of India
between 1757 and 1815 amounted to £ 1000 million; the national income of
Britain in 1770 was about £125 million. Direct tribute payments alone
through the EIC approximated £1 million in some years.*

*1.  Teresa Hayter, **The Creation of World Poverty *(Pluto *1990*, 2nd
edition):

"*The British subsequently proceeded to destroy the industrial economy of
India itself. Between 1815 and 1832 the value of Indian cotton goods
exported fell from £1.3 million to below £100,000. BY the middle of
the 19thcentury, India was importing a quarter of all British cotton
goods.
"T*he Indian weavers suffered great hardship. Sir Charles Trevelyan declared
to a parliamentary inquiry in 1840:  "*Dacca which used to be the Manchester
of India has fallen from a flourishing town to a very poor one."  *A
governor-general of the EIC wrote in 1835: "*The bones of the weavers are
bleaching the plains of **India." * *
*Not only the textile industry, the iron and steel industry was destroyed as
well. *
**
2. Peter Fryer, **Black People in the British Empire, *(Pluto *1993*, 2nd
edition, p18-20)

The Battle of Plassey put an end once and for all to the need for Britain to
send precious silver to India (from the sale of slaves in the West Indies).
The EIC could now get their hands on India's wealth without having to send
wealth in return. The first step was the *dewani*. the right to collect the
revenue on Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Before the British came, there was no
private property; the self-governing village community handed over each year
to the ruler or his nominee, the 'king's share' of the year's produce. The
EIC stopped this practice and introduced a new system in which the State was
the supreme landlord. The cultivator had to pay a fixed sum ot the
government every year whether or not his crop had been successful. In the
years of bad harvest, the cultivators were forced to borrow from
moneylenders to pay their taxes and British authorities did not hesitate to
charge 200% interest or more.
Furthermore, Indian and other merchants (French, Danish) were prevented from
trading in grain, salt, betel nuts and tobacco, In 1769, the Company
prohibited the homework of silk weavers and compelled them to work in its
factories. Weavers who disobeyed were seized, jailed, fined or flogged.

India was not only agricultural but also had an established industrial base.
It had a prosperous textile industry whose cotton, silk and woollen products
were marketed to Europe and elsewhere in Asia.
It had remarkable skills in iron-working. Calcutta, Daman, Surat, Bombay and
Pegu were important shipbuilding centres and in 1802 skilled Indian workers
were building British warships at the Bombay Shipyard of Bomanjee &
Maneckjee. It was acknowledged that the teakwood vessels of Bombay were
greatly superior to the oaken walls of Old England. Benares was famous for
its brass, copper and bell-metal wares. Other industries included the
enamelled jewellery and stone-carving of Rajputana towns, as well as
filigree work in gold and silver, ivory, glass, tannery, perfumery and
paper-making.
The British destroyed the Indian textile industry and throttled tha
shipbuilding, metalwork, glass and paper industries. An order by Sit Charles
Wood, Secretary of State for India (1859-66) obliged the British government
in India to use only British-made paper. As the industrial revolution took
off in Britain, heavy duties were levied on Indian textiles while British
goods secured virtual free entry into India.
*Systematic plunder led to the 1769-70 famine in which 10 million people
died. A commons Select Committee reported in 1783 that "the Natives of all
ranks and orders had been reduced to a state of depression and misery."*

*3. Third World Network* postings (02 Aug *1998*)

"*A statement presented in the British Parliament in 1773 said that the
total net revenue from Bengal was £13,066,761. The total expenditure was
£9,027,609 and the total remitted to England was the difference, a little
over £4 million.
"Robert Clive, hero of Plassey, who came with nothing returned home with a
fortune of over £250,000."* *
[Pic shows Robert Clive, wife and child with Indian maid. It was painted by
Reynolds]
**The Times *(29/9/1997) reviewed Robert Harvey's *Clive: the Life and Death
of a British** **Emperor *(Hodder 1997):
"*Robert Clive came from the declining landed gentry. He looked to India to
pay his father's debts and so save his Shropshire estate, and provide
dowries for his five sisters. He joined the EIC as a clerk in 1743,
bargained his way to a commission. He discovered he could lead and a
succession of sieges and skirmishes led to the victory of Plassey in 1757.
He left India in 1765, was put on trial by Parliament in 1772 for violence
and corruption and killed himself in 1774 by slitting his throat with a
pen-knife**." *

*4**. The Guardian* (Feb 11, *2004*)* *reported that
*[Pic shows Mughal flask, part of looted Mughal treasure]
*Part of a treasure looted by Robert Clive and the East India Company was to
be auctioned in London in the  spring. The star of the Christie's auction is
a *jewelled Mughal flask*, made in jade and studded with bands of emeralds
and ruby flowers set in gold, which was once part of the royal collection at
the Imperial Court in Delhi, and is now valued at over £1m. It is 25 cm high
and only one of three such flasks. The jade flask will go on display at
Christie's with Clive's jewelled daggers, bowls and jars, and an agate fly
whisk set with rubies, before the auction in April. Christie's experts
describe it as one of the greatest surviving pieces of Mughal craftsmanship.
However, the treasures still owned by Clive's descendants have been
displayed by the Victoria and Albert Museum for many years.

*Clive, who came from minor country gentry in Shropshire, eventually
estimated his personal fortune, after 35 years with the East India Company,
at over £400,000. His original contract with the company offered him £70 a
year.
*At the parliamentary inquiry in 1773, he declared fiercely: "*By God, Mr
Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation*." However,
the experience triggered another of his lifelong bouts of depression, and *he
killed himself the following year.*

*5 Nick Robin's* *The Corporation that Changed the World: how the East India
Company shaped the modern multinational *(Pluto *2006*):

After Robert Clive's victory at Palashi (Plassey) in 1757, the company
literally looted Bengal's treasury.* It loaded gold and silver onto a fleet
of more than 100 boats and sent it down river to Calcutta. In one stroke,
Clive netted a cool £2.5 million (more than £200m today) for the company and
£234,000 (£20m today) for himself.* *Palashi was the company's most
successful business deal*...

It was the unrivalled quality and cheapness of textiles that had lured the
East India Company to Bengal, and it would be Bengal's weavers who felt the
full force of the company's newfound market power. Never rich, the weavers
nevertheless had a better standard of living than their counterparts in
18th-century England. At a time when the British state was intervening on
the side of the employer--for example, to set maximum levels for
wages--India's weavers were able to act collectively, aiding their ability
to negotiate favourable prices. But the East India Company eliminated the
weavers' freedom to sell to other merchants, and so crushed their limited
but important market autonomy. It imposed prices 40 per cent below the
market rate, and enforced them with violence and imprisonment. *Many weavers
were driven to despair. One account reports that, among the winders of raw
silk, "instances have been known of cutting off their thumbs to prevent
their being forced to wind silk"*

*6**. *From *William Dalrymple's *review of *Nicholas Dirks'* book in *Outlook
India *online (Apr *2007*)

"Most terrible of all was the plunder of Bengal following its conquest by
the British in 1757. *The British commander Robert Clive returned to Britain
with the huge fortune of £300,000, making him one of the richest self-made
men in Europe; after one single battle—Plassey—he transferred to the company
treasury no less than £2.5 million that he had seized from the defeated
Nawab of Bengal. The conquered province was left devastated by war and high
taxation, and stricken by the famine of 1769. [10 million died] Its wealth
rapidly drained into British bank accounts, while its prosperous weavers and
artisans were coerced "like so many slaves" by their new British masters,
and the markets were flooded with British products. *As the contemporary
historian Alexander Dow put it:
"*At that time, Bengal was one of the richest, most populous and best
cultivated kingdoms in the world.... We may date the commencement of decline
from the day on which Bengal fell under foreign dominion.."*