Indian History 104: Mughals vs British - who was the bigger looters?

Going by the historical GDP estimates by Angus Maddison in his book Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD, we find the below estimates for the real GDP in terms of 1990$.

• 1500 - $60.5 bn (let’s take this as the start of the Mughal empire)
• 1850 - $125 bn (end of Mughal empire, start of British)
• 1947 - $214 bn (end of British empire)

which basically translates to

• 107% growth during 350 years of the Mughal empire, or about 0.21% per annum
• 71% growth during 100 years of British empire, or about 0.54% per annum

For the sake of comparison, the same growth for India post-independence has been ~4.5% per annum.

However, that alone does not give the complete picture.

India went from having a 25% share of the world’s GDP in 1500 to ~16% in 1820 to a meager 4.2% by the time the Britishers left.

So while the nominal growth was better under the British empire, it is far outweighed by the opportunity cost.

While India was growing at 0.21% under the Mughals, the world was growing at 0.32%. Under the British however, India grew at 0.54% while the rest of the world sprinted at about thrice the pace with a 1.6% annual growth rate.

The Mughals were invaders who came, saw, conquered, and settled. Like it happens in most dynastic regimes, existing rulers particularly the Lodi dynasty and the Rajputana houses were defeated and overthrown and a new dynasty took their place.

Some of the Mughal rulers were good, some were bad. We cannot overlook the fact that the regime erased and rewrote a lot of existing history, destroyed existing architecture and introduced their own, and the fact that millions of Hindus were forcefully converted, or tortured and killed. But it was acceptable during those times.

The British empire on the other hand were not conquerors or rulers. They were colonialists whose sole aim was to profit from it. They were after money, and not power.

The East India company was a corporate behemoth sponsored by one of the most powerful military empires of all time. At its peak it boasted an army greater than the British army, with more than a quarter million soldiers. It also enjoyed a near monopoly over the world's trade owing to the expanse of the British empire and the fading away of other colonial powers like the Dutch and the Portuguese.

Rough estimates of the total British loot from India are not in billions or even trillions of dollars, but 100x that.

A huge shout-out to Vishal Kale for Colonial Damage in Numbers by Vishal Kale on Blast from India's Past for putting together this incredible guesstimate.

1. 3.9 Million Pounds paid by Mir Jafar to East India Company 1757
2. 230000 pounds per annum from Mir Jafar's Successor
3. Annual takling 1932900 pounds from Bengal Bihar and Orissa
4. Annual revenue from Bihar alone: 680000 pounds
5. Famine 1770 : 10 million dead, directly due to British policies
6. Annual revenue from Bengal from 1793: 2.68 million pounds
7. Famines in 1783, 1792, 1807, 1813, 1823, 1834 and 1854
8. Famines in 1877, 1878, 1889, 1892, 1897, 1900 : 15 million dead. Note how the incidence of famine has increased with the passage of colonial rule...
9. Revenue from Allahabad: Pounds 1682306 per annum circa 1800s
10. Land Tax: 50% of produce
11. Maratha area: annual revenue 1,500,000 pounds per annum circa 1800s
12. Indian Debt: pounds 51,000,000 in 1857
13. Indian Debt: pounds 97,000,000 in 1862
14. Indian Debt pounds 200,000,000 in 1901
15. 44 Million sterling annual outflow from India to Britain. Multiply this figure alone by around 150 - that is approximate 6600 Million - 6.6 Billion. Now compound by 8%... the number comes to 37 Trillion pounds - or nearly 73 Trillion Dollars. India's external debt as on March 2011 was 345.8 Billion Dollars. . (This last bit - the compounding and the extrapolation of annual revenues over 150 years is my guesstimate; to equal it out I have used a factor 112 years)
16. Just one years revenue earnings to the British amount to 243 Billion Sterling- nearly 480 Billion Dollars even when I compound it by just 8%..... more than our total external debt . Just one years takings...
17. Now just compound the 1.5 Million taking in 1757 for 245 years at 8% - and you get a jaw-dropping number of 232 Trillion Sterling - or 475 Trillion Dollars.

(References: An Economic History Of India, Romesh C Dutt, 1906 / Churchill's Secret War, Madhushree Mukherjee 2012)

So yeah, external conquerors and colonials both sucked. But if forced to choose between the Mughals or the British at gunpoint, I would choose the former in a jiffy.