Historical Statistics as Text Unusual Indicators of How Ordinary British Folk Reaped from the World-Economy, 1800-1960

• Published in: Journal of Asian and African studies (Leiden) Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 73 - 115
• Main Author: Ejiogu, E. C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi SAGE Publications 01.02.2007; De Sitter; Sage Publications Ltd. (UK); SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: 19th century; 20th century; Accumulation; Asian studies; Beneficiaries; Capitalism; Center and Periphery; Centre-periphery relations; Colonial history; Colonialism; Colonization; Economic History; Economic systems; Ethnology; Global economy; Great Britain; Historical source materials; History; Income Distribution; India; Indigenous peoples; International economic relations; Slave trade; Sources and methods; Statistics; United Kingdom; Wealth; West Africa; World Economy; West Africa; South Asia; India; United Kingdom; colonialism; capitalist world-economic system; West African sub-region; slave trade; British historical statistics; periphe ryregions; India; Slave trade; British; History; Statistics; Colonialism; Periphery
• ISSN: 0021-9096; 1745-2538
• DOI: 10.1177/0021909606072809

Europe's colonization of other peoples was a program that aided and deepened the then on-going process of drawing and incorporating non-European regions of the world into the European-dominated capitalist world-economy. Since inception, the world capitalist economic system has enabled European nations to transfer enormous wealth from non-European areas to their respective economies. The beneficiaries of wealth transferred from the periphery regions of the world include European states, their rulers, and their peoples. But the extent to which ordinary members of a specific European population may have benefited from wealth that was generated in specific world regions over a period of time is largely unaccounted for in existing studies. The analysis of British historical statistics for the period 1800-1960 reveals pointers on certain aspects of the extent to which non-state components of the British society may have reaped from the wealth that was extracted from the Indian and West African sub-continents. Indigenous economies in both regions were incorporated and peripherialized into the world-economy and imperial Britain subsequently acquired colonies in them.