How can you do an economics degree in Britain without learning about the British Empire?

Thoughts on the toxic combination of the violence and denial of empire

I wrote recently about why I can’t teach economics anymore. One reason is it ignores the British Empire. In this article I look at how.

The first unit in the CORE curriculum

Let’s start at the beginning.

If you study economics you might start with the CORE economics curriculum and it’s first chapter — ‘The Capitalist Revolution’. This curriculum was launched with much fanfare after the financial crisis of 2008 to make up for some of the things economists missed in their theories. It promised to use more data from the real world. But there’s a problem. Because there are a few facts about the real world it leaves out.

Look at this graph, and more importantly, it’s interpretation;

“Not every capitalist country is the kind of economic success story exemplified in Figure 1.1a by Britain, later Japan, and the other countries that caught up”

Is this really how we should measure success?

In short, Britain is the poster child for Capitalism. Sure, in some places it’s not worked…