india

Researchers measured world carbon emissions from 1950 to 1986 and found that the United States, with about 5% of the world's population, was responsible for 30% of the cumulative emissions, whereas India, with 17% of the world's population, was responsible for less than 2% of the emissions. It is as if, in a village of 20 people all using the same bathtub, one person had shed 30% of the hair blocking the drain hold and 3 people had shed virtually no hair at all.

The East India Company's 'CEO' was Robert Clive. 'Clive of India' looted, literally, Bengal's treasury of all its gold and silver and loaded it onto a fleet of more than a hundred boats. The 'profit' to the company was £2.5 million (more than £200 million today), of which Clive's cut was £234,000 (£20 million). The 'multinational' was born, conceived by a breed known as speculators, who in 1784 drove up the price of food beyond the reach of India's poor. 'Estimates vary', wrote Robins, 'but up to ten million people may have died of starvation'. In a country which, in the seventeenth century, was the 'agricultural mother of Asia and the industrial workshop of the world.', where the weavers of cotton enjoyed a higher standard of living than their counterparts in England, life under British rule became a lesser commodity.

The fall of Delhi to the British... was accompanied by the slaughter of thousands of civilians. One officer later confessed that his men "were very savage, treating those poor wretches like vermin. Some carried ropes on purpose to hang them with, which they did with great delight." The killing was accompanied by an orgy of looting with many officers becoming rich men. Queen Victoria herself "acquired some prize articles, including the evanescent emperor's jewelled hat and gilt chairs".