The Imperial Balance Sheet – Part 2: What the Ledgers Show — India
·2079 words·10 mins
On February 19, 1906, a printed schedule was laid before the House of Commons. It listed, line by line, every payment India made to Britain in the financial year 1904–05: £19,463,757 in total. Interest on debt. Military pensions. Army effective charges. Store purchases. The document was not secret. It was published every year. It was the architecture of extraction, open to inspection, and largely uninspected.