Britain’s offshore empire of magic money islands

Colonialism always was about trade, offshore trading is merely the latest mutation. The global economy is at the mercy of financial gangsters, backed by teams of lawyers, who understand the ecology of the new system only too well. The bad boys of Brexit will be the beneficiaries, while pulling the strings of patriotism.

 The word ‘empire’ is often used as carelessly. Britain no longer has an empire in the way it had in the 19th Century, with slaves, huge flows of raw materials into the UK, and territories under military garrison.

But in the same way that gold coins have evolved first into paper and then into weightless movements of electrons, so one of the most significant parts of the UK economy has moved with the times. We saw last week how offshore islands emerged almost ready-made for a niche in this new financial ecology, with their lack of infrastructure and their desperate need for investment, especially following the break-up of Britain’s physical empire.

And although the image of empire is usually one of ceremonial display, military domination and grateful natives, much of its motivation as well as its daily activity was simply about trade. India and swathes of China and the Far East were invaded with the aim of taking raw materials at bargain prices and forcing open local markets to British manufactured goods. Only when the natives were a bit ungracious was it time for undiplomatic methods, as Pankat Mishraj describes in From the Ruins of Empire.

The link to this will be provided when it has been located