Making a Fortune

Description

God, glory, and gold-among those three motives for conquest, there's little doubt about which shines brightest. This program shows how Britain's hegemony began as a pirates' treasure hunt, grew into a loosely aligned realm based on trade, and developed into not only an empire but a global financial network. Viewers travel from Jamaica, where sugar made plantation owners rich on the backs of African slaves, to Calcutta, where British traders became the new princes of India. The film then heads to Hong Kong, where British-supplied opium fueled colonization and economic dominance. Unfair trading helped spark the independence movement in India, led by Mahatma Gandhi; in a former cotton-spinning town in Lancashire, viewers meet two women who remember Gandhi's extraordinary visit in 1931.

Runtime

58 min

Series

Subjects

Geography

Genre

Date of Publication

[2013], c2012

Database

Films on Demand

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