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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Yep.

Britain controlled the largest empire in history, yet most of its own population lived in dire poverty. I don’t believe this was accidental.

Imperial profits flowed almost entirely to a small propertied class (the landed gentry). The working classes.. who provided the soldiers, sailors, and labour.. saw virtually none of it whilst living in squalor. Before 1918, most British men couldn’t vote at all; franchise was tied to property ownership.

When we discuss ‘the British Empire,’ we’re largely describing the actions and enrichment of perhaps 3-5% of the British population. Most Britons today can trace their ancestry back through generations of poverty and disenfranchisement, not imperial beneficiaries. It’s an important distinction that’s often lost in broader discussions of imperial responsibility, as if those who are generationally impoverished should share guilt.

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Dire poverty by modern standards, sure. But the 19th century saw a spectacular rise in living standards even for average Britons. The literacy rate in Britain was ~60% for men and 40% for women in 1800, by the end of the century it was near universal for both genders. Life expectancy at birth rose from ~40 to 50. Median wages rose, too, climbing ~50% from 1800 to 1850 (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Real-wages-during-the-pe...).

It is simultaneously true that the average Briton (arguably wealthy Britons, too) in 1900 lived in abject poverty compared to 2025, and the 19th century saw one of the fastest rises in living standards in Britain even among average Britons.

Wasn't the literacy rate in New England substantially higher than the literacy rate in Old England, both in 1800 and in the years prior to its declaration of independence?

New England had a male literacy rate of around 70% compared to Britain's 60% in 1800. But New England was one of the most literate regions in America around the time of the founding, including the other American regions into the literacy rate would bring the literacy rate down (even more so when if one includes the enslaved population). Comparing the literacy rate one specific region of one country, to the national average of another country is comparing apples to oranges.

But the important thing is, the 1900 Britain's male literacy rate was 97%. Illiteracy went from something that was fairly common to exceptionally rare.

You’ve rather missed my point. I’m not saying nothing improved. I’m saying the imperial profits didn’t go to the people doing the dying for empire.

50% wage growth over fifty years whilst Britain’s running the largest empire in history? Compare that to the United States over the same period. The US saw 60% real wage growth from 1860-1890 with no empire whatsoever. If imperial profits were trickling down, you’d expect Britain to outpace non-imperial industrialising nations. It didn’t, if anything it was worse.

The literacy and life expectancy gains you’re citing came from industrialisation and public health reforms, not imperial dividends. Meanwhile the landed gentry who actually controlled the imperial trade were getting obscenely wealthy.

Life expectancy of 50 in 1900 still meant working-class Londoners in overcrowded tenements with open sewers, whilst their supposed countrymen lived in townhouses with servants. The Victorian poor saw industrial revolution gains, not imperial ones.

I’ve done more digging now because even though its apples to oranges, the UK itself is now no longer an empire, and we have a 50 year window on when it wasn’t…

So just for additional context on how wage growth compares across different periods (I’ve average across decades):

Victorian Britain (with empire):

- 50% real wage growth over 50 years (1800-1850)

Modern Britain (post-empire):

- 1970s-1980s: 2.9% annual real wage growth

- 1990s: 1.5% annual growth

- 2000s: 1.2% annual growth

- 2010s-2020s: essentially zero growth

Real wages grew by roughly 33% per decade from 1970 to 2007, then completely stagnated. By 2020, median disposable income was only 1% higher than in 2007; less than 1% growth over 13 years.

The really depressing bit? Workers actually did far better in the post-imperial period (1970-2005) than they ever did during the height of empire.

Which tells you everything you need to know about who was actually pocketing the imperial profits.

And the post-2008 wage stagnation shows the same pattern's still alive and well, just without colonies to extract from. Capital finds new ways to capture the gains; financialisation, asset inflation, whatever: whilst labour still gets the scraps.

Different methods, same fucking result.

The Victorian poor weren't sharing in empire's spoils, and modern workers aren't sharing in productivity gains either. I guess mechanisms change, but the outcome doesn't.

Asset inflation going into non-productive assets like land or monopoly privileges. Tech monopolies are famous example of this, which is why they're large percentage of the SP500.

Most loans are for land, which mean your banking system isn't directing loans toward productive assets which increase economic activity.

So, no, the mechanism didn't change FMPOV.

> Which tells you everything you need to know about who was actually pocketing the imperial profits

No, not really. Britain did not exist in isolation. Economic growth was generally very slow in the 1800s.

So you need to compare Britain with its peers like France or Germany in both periods.

You’re absolutely correct. The UK built an empire because it industrialized early and had the money and technology to do so. But the empire isn’t what made it rich in the first place.

> The US saw 60% real wage growth from 1860-1890 with no empire whatsoever

I understand what you mean. But also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

You are right that common people in Britain didn't get as much out of Pax Brittanica as America's did during its own period of expansion.

Quite a different situation. An empire is when you go to a populated place and extract wealth from the people who live there. That’s not what manifest destiny was. America expanded into land that was sparsely populated by natives americans and mexico who had no wealth to extract.

The wealth was in and on the land.

> expanded into land that was sparsely populated

Yes, that’s exactly the situation that results in highest income/wealth per capita. As long as that land can be utilized productively.

That last sentence is doing all the work though. North American indians lived on the largest continuous region of agricultural land in the world, connected with perhaps the best river network, and never had above subsistence levels of wealth per capita.

It's hard to farm all that land when there are no horses to pull a plow, or pigs, cows, or sheep to raise for meat and milk and wool and manure. They didn't have all the crops that colonists crossed over with either: wheat, rice, and soybeans. The only crop of comparable productivity was corn, which was domesticated in South and Central America and had to be adapted to North America over many generations.

After they crossed the Bering Strait they also didn't receive any of the subsequent Old World advances in metallurgy, agriculture, chemistry, societal organization and so forth.

It's asking quite a lot of a relatively small population base to invent all those things independently while also lacking everything necessary to have comparable agricultural yields.

There was no Silk Road bringing gunpowder and paper and the Black Death to these societies. That means the native populations colonists encountered were the survivors of utterly cataclysmic epidemics. It's like if aliens brought a virus to Earth that killed 95% of the population and then they went "Hmm...these earthlings, they're not terribly productive are they?"

I'm not an anthropologist or an economist or a historian so there are many other factors I missed.

"America expanded into land that was sparsely populated"

What does this remind you of?

It wasn't sparsely populated until you murdered everyone

> The US saw 60% real wage growth from 1860-1890 with no empire whatsoever.

Um. Weren't they carving one out of the American West? I mean, there were people there beforehand... it feels like a not-dissimilar situation.

> US saw 60% real wage growth from 1860-1890 with no empire whatsoever

Yes, having infinite farmland in a still mostly agrarian economy gives you a massive head start.

Before the 20th century the link between the population and the amount of productive land was very direct.

Everyone bringing this up is missing the point entirely.

I thought people would be able to “get” it on their own so I didn’t bother replying but you’re the fourth person, so let me help you understand.

Britain had 1/3rd of the fucking planet, including an active workforce and their accumulated generational assets.

The US had: barely arable farmland, the trials and tribulations of european settlers are well documented.

Yet wages went up more in one of these, and not the one that was controlling 1/3rd of the planet.

Wages were higher in the North American colonies even before their insubordination.

Yes, the poor European settlers out there raping and a pillaging, burning and a looting,destroying cultures and entire people's to build their shiny palace on the hill. Remove the beam from your eye septic

I'm discussing wealth distribution, not defending genocide. If you can't tell the difference, that's your problem.

> the trials and tribulations of european settlers

Yet it was already the richest place per capita in the 1700s. At least in the Northeast the average British colonist was earned more money, was healthier, lived significantly longer and was even actually taller than the average person who remained in Britain.

All because they had more land per capita.

> active workforce and their accumulated generational assets

Yes, its just that per capita (across the entire empire) that workforce wasn’t very productive.

Did something happen after 1860 in the USA that suddenly caused a large proportion of the working population to start receiving wages, thus boosting "average wage growth" artificially?

I'm fairly sure statisticians know about history and account for it.

The Empire wasn't profitable.

Yes. America had no empire. Except for the giant land empire that was, and is, America. Or does invading and occupying thousands of square miles of land, annihilating entire nations, and enslaving and slaughtering the natives, a process that was still very much ongoing between 1860 and 1890 not count as empire building?

Was that due to the british empire, or was that broadly happening across the western world during that same time period?

It's instructive to compare the wealthiest nations in Europe, with the largest colonial-era European empires. There is not much overlap.

Wealthiest countries in Europe: Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, San Marino, Sweden...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...

Largest European colonial empires: Britain, Russia, Spain, France, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires#Empire...

Some historians believe that once you account for the costs of subjugation and development, empire is not usually net profitable for the sovereign. Basically just a gigantic monument to the ruler's ego.

As Carl Sagan put it: Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

How is that instructive? The British empire was mostly gone by the 1950s and a hell of a lot happened after that. It would be more instructive to look at Britain just before WW1 compared to the other countries.

At their peak, virtually all of the aforementioned empires brought enormous wealth to the homeland. It might not be profitable in the long run, but the long run can mean centuries before it becomes a net negative.

Also, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were part of a Danish empire at one point.

Empire was always a net negative financially. The British empire was big because Great Britain was rich enough to fund it.

The British East India Company didn't create "billionaires" with vast estates?

The Dutch East Indies weren't returning home with spices of greater value than gold?

Spain didn't plunder so much gold and silver it devalued to the floor?

Belgium went broke under the crushing cost of exploiting the Congo?

I'll go with all empires eventually fall - but many grow on the inflow of wealth from their colonies.

Perhaps you mean "true" accounting - no resources are created, they just move from those that have them to the seat of Empire which wanted them - no net gain, just added costs of transport and military forces.

Historically, though, that's never been how wealth was counted by those that ran ledgers on everything they wanted.

The Empire was self-financing. Taxes on trade paid for the ships and sailors to protect the trade routes (with a fair bit left over).

> Wealthiest countries in Europe: Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, San Marino, Sweden.

Microstates and tax havens account for half that list, which grossly distorts wealth measurements. Such as Apple Europe being accounted for in Ireland.

The rest: (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden); former kingdom of Denmark, also Hanseatic League? Apart from the brief period around 1700 at the height of the Swedish Empire, none of these count as imperial powers and did not have overseas empires.

Netherlands: had a substantial navy and overseas trading empire, although not as big area-wise as the UK. Probably more cost-effective as a result.

> Britain, Russia, Spain, France, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium

What happened here is that all the great empires spent all their money and a vast quantity of human lives fighting each other to the death. Twice. I suppose Spain and Portugal collapsed on their own to ineffective dictators.

(special "fuck Belgium" entry here for just how brutal the small Belgian empire was; Belgian occupation of the Congo cost more lives than the Holocaust)

Britain was much richer per capita than every other major European country and almost all smaller ones. Whether that was because of its much bigger industrial sector or its enpire is debatable.

One could argue that they privatized the profits and socialized the costs. The costs being the army, navy and to a lesser extent an army of colonial administrators. You can see a similar shape in the decision to end slavery in 1833 by, essentially, buying it out. The money for that buyout had to come from somewhere.

(I'm not a historian, I've no idea how well this idea would stand up to scrutiny).

You seem to be implying that the landed gentry financially benefited from the Empire?

Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire by Lance E. Davis and Robert A. Huttenback.

But like I said, I'm not a historian.

The dire urban poverty was so much better than the pre-industrial rural poverty that nearly half of Great Britain moved from the countryside to a city during that period.

You see the exact same patterns in India and China today.

Not quite. There was more work in the cities, but living conditions were more cramped and pollution was rife.

You can second-guess their decision all you want but they voted with their feet

How am I second guessing their decision? Many of my ancestors were evicted from their native lands by hostile landlords so had to go elsewhere. It wasn't their decision to make in the first place.

Sounds pretty much like today

A poor person today has a better standard of living than a rich person in the 1700s

That seems improbable unless they, say, own hundreds of slaves, travel extensively in Europe, never want for food or alcohol, own multiple houses, etc.

Eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Manigault

Machinery, computers, and the internet do more than hundreds of slaves/servants worth of work (how many musicians and actors would have to be at your call to replicate YouTube, which is free?). A poor person in Europe can still travel all over the Eurozone by train, etc. In the first world, we pivoted to "food insecurity" instead of "hunger", but the most common signifier of being food insecure is obesity: more food and alcohol than a person should want, at least. The only one that is a definite downgrade among those you list is the lack of owned houses and/or land.

> A poor person in Europe can still travel all over the Eurozone

I picked a rich person in the Americas with hundreds of slaves, many houses, considerable land, a thriving business delivering returns, political connections, and frequently holiday on another continent.

This is well above the standard of living of a poor person in contemporary America.

No they don't. I don't live in a mansion with dozens of rooms, servants and footmen.

Poor people have hundreds of servants, they're just robotic: a dishwasher, a laundry washer, a water heater, a door announcer, a courier who can travel at the speed of light, etc.

I don't have any of these except the last one.

Everybody now has antibiotics, oral contraception, machines to preserve and cook food, clean, heat your home, pass messages and put on music and plays in your living room.

Who now needs dozens of personal physicians (practicing 19thC medicine!), prostitutes, cooks, maids, messenger boys and musicians?

I don't use most of the things you described. I don't sleep around so don't need two of those.

My home is currently unheated thanks to high utility costs and taxes.

The last three times I was on antibiotics they did almost nothing for me.

>You’re hitting a crucial paradox

AI?

Just curious

No, just trying to open friendly.

I sweated over the opening for 5 minutes because I didn’t want to go in really hard with “don’t you know most brits had it bad ackshulee!”- because I’m one of those generationally poverty-stricken brits and it hits a bit too close to home to sound neutral.

Removed it; I’m getting flagged regardless, I might as well own it.

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