Introduction : seeing the boomerang -- The state -- The company -- The border -- The debt -- The tax -- The city -- Conclusion : there is an alternative.

"Britain didn't just put the empire back the way it had found it. In 'Uncommon Wealth,' Kojo Koram traces the shocking tale of how Britain treated its former non-white colonies after the end of empire. This is the story of well-heeled British intellectuals, politicians, accountants and lawyers who offshored their capital, seized assets and saddled debt in Britain's former 'dependencies'. Enabling horrific inequality across the globe, these ruthless capitalists profited as ordinary people in Britain's former territories in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean were trapped in poverty. However, the reinforcement of capitalist power across the world also ricocheted back home, unnoticed. Now it has left many Britons wondering where their own sovereignty and prosperity has gone. Following the most significant figures trying to remake the world after empire, from Jamaica's Michael Manley to Singapore's Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, from Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah to Britain's Margaret Thatcher, 'Uncommon Wealth' is a blistering revelation of Britain's scandalous and disastrous treatment of newly independent countries in recent decades. The process of decolonisation was one of the great global changes of the past hundred years, and yet Britain - the protagonist in the whole, messy drama - has forgotten it was ever even there. 'Uncommon Wealth' shows how those buried decisions of decades past are now breaking Britain today."-- Taken from dust jacket.