Uncommon Wealth
Britain and the Aftermath of Empire
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Narrated by:
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Kojo Koram
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By:
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Kojo Koram
About this listen
Britain didn't just put the empire back the way it had found it.
In Uncommon Wealth, Kojo Koram traces the tale of how after the end of the British empire an interconnected group of well-heeled British intellectuals, politicians, accountants and lawyers offshored their capital, seized assets and saddled debt in former 'dependencies'. This enabled horrific inequality across the globe as ruthless capitalists profited and ordinary people across Britain's former territories in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean were trapped in poverty. However, the reinforcement of capitalist power across the world also ricocheted back home. Now it has left many Britons wondering where their own sovereignty and prosperity has gone...
Decolonisation was not just a trendy buzzword. It was one of the great global changes of the past hundred years, yet Britain - the protagonist in the whole, messy drama - has forgotten it was ever even there. A blistering uncovering of the scandal of Britain's disastrous treatment of independent countries after empire, Uncommon Wealth shows the decisions of decades past are contributing to the forces that are breaking Britain today.
(P) Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2022 Kojo Koram
Critic reviews
Brilliantly arranged and rich with fresh insights, Uncommon Wealth reminds us how the forgotten stories of empire and decolonisation continue to impact our daily lives in Britain - and throughout the world - up to today. (Akala)
A radical, beautifully written understanding of our history - ingeniously placing Britain's recent tumult into context (Owen Jones)
You can't understand how Britain works today without reading it (Frankie Boyle)
Unflinching and lucidly written, Uncommon Wealth challenges everything you thought you knew about the British Empire and its legacy. This book should be part of the national curriculum (Ellie Mae O'Hagan)
A challenge to a nation living in the shadow of empire: reckon with your imperial past, or it will come back to bite you . . . Stirring, rigorous and readable (Grace Blakeley)
Compelling and masterful . . . Perfectly timed for a moment when more are recognizing that the past is not past, the legacies of empire are profound, and another world is possible (Samuel Moyn, Yale University)
Brilliant, illuminating, often surprising and shocking, Kojo Koram's careful and sensitive telling of the stories that so many of us do not know is a masterpiece (Danny Dorling, University of Oxford)
An ambitious blend of history, memoir and current affairs - Koram's superb and combative account shows how Britain's near-past can explain its present predicament. A fascinating account of the British Empire written with an exciting blend of passion and scholarship (David Dabydeen)
Uncommon Wealth brilliantly exposes the imperial origins of much of Britain's contemporary crisis. Koram shows how the empire ordered overseas a structure of law, property, economic institutions and citizenship, which came home (Professor Richard Drayton, KCL)
By carefully dissecting the economic legacy of the British Empire, Koram has exposed some troubling home truths about the causes and effects of the very unequal world in which we live. A fascinating history, Koram's unique perspective sheds new light on an old problem (Robert Verkaik)
A superb and vivid account of the ideas, laws and economic instruments that bind contemporary Britain to its long colonial history (Will Davies, Professor of Political Economy, Goldsmiths)
Fantastic. Koram clearly and informatively details the links between the economic dependency imposed on Britain's former colonies after decolonisation and the crisis that 'Global Britain' now finds itself facing (Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists)
A tour de force by one of the most brilliant young thinkers writing in Britain today . . . Urgent and relevant (Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, author of What If Latin America Ruled the World?)
A bold and brazen account of the economic afterlives of the British Empire (Imaobong Umoren, LSE)
Great reading of a great book
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Brilliant
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A thought provoking assessment of empire and economics
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A most eye opening book of clear historical information
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That poverty is not innate to Africa or Asia but is a consequence of an extractive economic system in which Euro-American, Asian and African elites collaborate to the detriment of billions of working class people.
That the tactics of empire - old or new - all too often come home to roost, whether it’s the deployment of anti-Mau Mau tactics in Northern Ireland or the disciplining of labour and the dismantling of state provision of basic services to yield higher profits.
That the culture wars being waged by the ruling class and their media talking heads is a distraction - that irrelevances such as removing portraits of the queen or even arguing about street names covers up the on-going robbery both of British working class people and the former subjects of empire by the capitalists.
It’s accessible,it threw in a few details about Jamaican and Singaporean political history I didn’t know, the authors voice is pretty mellifluous, all in all this gets a good rating from me.
Decolonising everything benefits you!
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