Uncommon Wealth

Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing Longlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding A Guardian Book of the Year 'Brilliantly arranged and rich with fresh insights' Akala 'A radical, beautifully written understanding of our history' Owen Jones 'You can't understand how Britain works today without reading it' Frankie Boyle 'A challenge to a nation living in the shadow of empire: reckon with your imperial past, or it will come back to bite you' Grace Blakeley 'This book should be part of the national curriculum' Ellie Mae O'Hagan Britain didn't just put the empire back the way it had found it. Uncommon Wealth is the little known and shocking history of how Britain treated its former non-white colonies after the end of empire. It is the story of how an interconnected group of British capitalists enabled horrific inequality across the globe, profiting in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. However, the greed unleashed in this era would boomerang, now leaving many ordinary Britons wondering where their own prosperity has gone. Ranging from Jamaica to Singapore, Ghana to Britain, this is a blistering account of how buried decisions of decades past are ravaging Britain today.