UK looted $65 trillion from India during its colonial rule: Oxfam report

Former colonies of the British Empire seek a combined reparation claims totalling a staggering $180 trillion

Hyderabad: A whopping $65 trillion is the “value of resources” that the British extracted during their 200-year colonial rule in India, according to a 2024 Oxfam research study. Though the claims remain fiercely contested, lawyers note that while the sheer scale is novel, the sourcing of the figures from scholars and institutions such as Oxfam grants them a new gravity in potential international courts and forums.

This comes amidst the demand of former colonies of the British Empire seeking a combined reparation claim totalling a staggering $180 trillion, marking the largest single financial reckoning in history and escalating a decades-long moral and legal struggle into a tangible economic confrontation.

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The astronomical figure of $180 trillion aggregates formal and emerging claims from nations across the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. It represents the culmination of nearly 80 years of advocacy, now supercharged by coordinated diplomatic action and fresh academic research quantifying the scale of historical extraction and damage.

The push reached a critical juncture as leaders of African States put forth a unified continental claim. Preliminary estimates from the African Union place the damages from British colonial rule on the continent between $100 and $120 trillion. Nigeria has already filed a standalone claim of $5 trillion.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has forwarded joint claims estimated at $24 trillion, with Barbados accounting for $4.9 trillion of that amount.