TBH the “Economy of the British Empire” article is poorly sourced, especially for the claim that Britain profited from its colonies - the linked source is a Fortune article (even if it has help from an economic historian from Stanford), with only one paragraph on the British empire, and the relevant sentance seems to be this:
“At the height of the British Empire, about 6% of its total output came from its colonies, more than any other Western power.”
I don’t really understand what this is supposed to mean, since according to the table in the Wikipedia article, British India’s GDP was higher than the UK’s. 6% certainly doesn’t sound impressive. But even then, GDP =/= profit, and being the worldwide dominant power is not really a status that most colonial powers can hope to achieve.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 10 hours ago
Also, duckduckgoing it, there are quite a few sources that still claim that the British Empire wasn’t profitable for the government in Britain, or regular British people, e.g.:
www.jstor.org/stable/2598015
iea.org.uk/…/empire-and-slavery-did-not-make-brit…
(I’m not that knowledgable about the quality of these particular sources, just demonstrating that the claim isn’t rare)