Tirthankar Roy
@RoyHistory1 · joined 21 May 2022
Historian, musician
11 493Followers
231Following
1 204Posts total
430.5KViews on collected posts
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@RoyHistory1 The drain of wealth was a political slogan crafted as a tool to delegitimise British rule over India. It was not a measure of economic give and take between India and UK. Once history writing got overtaken by politics, teaching DoW became central to teaching history
1.1K views · 11 likes
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@RoyHistory1 Sunil Khilnani has written in his 1997 Idea of India that after the 1857 mutiny and end of East India Company rule, Lord Canning was averse to the idea of high taxation and extraction, declaring "I would rather govern India with 40,000 British troops without an incom
3.1K views · 42 likes
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What gets measured as drain is export surplus. From early-19th c to the Depression, colonial India’s export surplus paid for services like profits on FDI, debt service, admin costs. This was trade, not a vacuum cleaner sucking wealth into London.
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To show a real “tribute” element, you must compare payments like debt service to their contribution to national income. Most who tout trillion‑dollar claims can’t do this. Without that basic step, nothing “unrequited” or “drainish” remains, just bookkeeping dressed up as tragedy.
15K views · 363 likes
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Repeat a crazy number long enough and it starts sounding true. Activist‑historians use this trick, turning polemic into pseudo‑scholarship. Their jargon, “unrequited transfer,” “tribute,” “drain”, has no analytical value. Nationalists coined these, which modern ideologues recycle
147.8K views · 637 likes
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In a lecture in India (by a scientist) I heard the claim that Britain looted 68.5 tr dollars from India. The old figure of 48 trillion isn’t dramatic enough anymore. And someone added a decimal for extra spice.
91.4K views · 1.2K likes
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@RoyHistory1 Congratulations Tirthankar, looking forward to reading it!
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Rather than relying on broad theories of imperialism, the book examines how colonialism, regional condition, and historical contingencies shaped development and deprivation. It highlights the Empire's enduring yet uneven legacy and the roots of contemporary development challenges
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These consequences varied because local actors, colonial administrations, markets, and geographical conditions shaped how imperial rule operated in practice. A comparative perspective is needed to explain the divergent patterns of growth, inequality, and development taking shape.
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The book argues that trade, migration, capital flows, and economic integration across the Empire were central to patterns of growth and inequality in Asia, Africa, the Atlantic, and the Pacific. Economic history is essential for understanding colonialism’s long-term consequences.
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Popular narratives portray the Empire as a coherent and exploitative project. This book offers a fresh examination; emphasising the diversity of experiences, showing how economic outcomes emerged from local conditions, institutions, and interactions rather than an imperial design
5.3K views · 125 likes
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Announcing the publication of Leigh Gardner and Tirthankar Roy, The British Empire: An Economic History (London: Polity). Available for pre-order at https://t.co/WbC5iZCn4o https://t.co/T1vNNhREo6
109.8K views · 968 likes
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Announcing the publication of Ewout Frankema and Tirthankar Roy, eds., Routledge Handbook of the Economic History of Colonialism. https://t.co/BBL3uJhcF3. https://t.co/5iECBQZl3k
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Reading now: Anglo-India and the End of Empire, by Uther Charlton-Stevens, London: Hurst, 2022. Also of interest: Charleton-Stevens, Anglo-Indians and Minority Politics in South Asia, Routledge, 2018. https://t.co/G8RdUAA1J8
5K views · 119 likes
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The way empire is taught in schools across the UK is a subject of national debate. Discussing a project designed to link academic research to classrooms, Tirthankar Roy talks to Sophie Mallett about how economic history can reveal diverse perspectives on the British Empire.
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Against accounts of the same size
15 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 10K–100K follower range. shown to more people than peers of the same size.
Median views4 990this account999median for 10K–100K
Reach, %43.42%this account3.62%median for 10K–100K
Engagement, %2.10%this account1.92%median for 10K–100K
| Metric | This account | Median for 10K–100K | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median views per post | 4 990 | 999 | 4.99× |
| Reach (views ÷ followers) | 43.42% | 3.62% | 12.0× |
| Engagement rate | 2.10% | 1.92% | 1.09× |
Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →
Growth & engagement
How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.
Views per post
5K29 Jul
19.5K10 Aug
109.8K25 Aug
5.3K
3.6K
1.8K
4K
2.5K
91.4K1 Sep
147.8K
15K
18.2K
3.1K
1.1K2 Sep
Last 14 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.
Engagement rate per post
2.77%29 Jul
2.10%10 Aug
1.11%25 Aug
2.54%
2.17%
2.84%
2.13%
0.32%
1.57%1 Sep
0.47%
2.52%
2.37%
1.50%
1.04%2 Sep
Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 10K–100K accounts is 1.92%.
What the audience does
Likes70.0%4 463 in total
Reposts7.9%501 in total
Replies1.6%104 in total
Quotes1.2%78 in total
Bookmarks19.3%1 229 in total
Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.
Followers by day
9 Sep
Daily snapshots since 09 Sep 2026; the dashed line is the starting count.
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