how important was india to feed UK in the war

[geogus]

Every time I read about UK and atlantic war, Its only about the fact UK is a insland poor in resources that relied on US lend and lease in order not to starve and keep figthing.

Very little, as far as I know, is said about the resources UK gets from its colonies, in especial India.

However, if i were to guess, im pretty sure India gave an significant contribution to UK in terms of resources.

Could someone teach me about the importance of india and other colonies regarding resources for the UK mainland.

If it was important , what game resources would India provide UK?

Im asing this because when I play italy, once I capture suez, I like to send huge ammounts of subs to african east coast in order to attack resources convoys from india going trough madagascar channel and support germany in atlantic battle

In real life if Italy was able to start a sub campaing in African east coast would it hurt UK?

 

[Denkt]

India is a puppet to UK which mean UK can trade all resources from it but at the standard cost I think.

India probably have several of the resources needed.

 

[Daelyn75]

Gahh! All these questions about the game that we all have. I just wish I could have a copy of the finalized version of the game and play it so that everything is answered for me.

 

[Will Steel]

India was very rich in raw resources as always, but had few factories. So Britain can exploit India to death like historically, and get huge amount of raw resources, especially metals and most probably rubber from India without any drawbacks. On the other hand the lack of factories means Britain would have to ship civilian goods to India unless agriculture is represented and creates civilian goods.

 

[jamesd]

I'm not sure how much food India provided to Britain, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't much as India was still a 3rd world country with the consequent farming practices & technology. I would think the vast majority of the food it produced would have been consumed by Indians. I know Australia & New Zealand both produced lots of food for export to the UK during the war, and both countries reduced the size of their armed forces later in the war to return men to the farms to boost production. I suspect the situation in Canada was similar.

 

[Will Steel]

I'm not sure how much food India provided to Britain, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't much as India was still a 3rd world country with the consequent farming practices & technology. I would think the vast majority of the food it produced would have been consumed by Indians. I know Australia & New Zealand both produced lots of food for export to the UK during the war, and both countries reduced the size of their armed forces later in the war to return men to the farms to boost production. I suspect the situation in Canada was similar.

India produced a lot of food, and that is why Churchill kept snatching it and shipped it out of India before someone could oppose. And this caused the enormous and disastrous 1943 Bengal Famine. Punjab produced more grain than majority of western Europe combined - which is why a lot of food was cut off from India with a huge shortage once the British splintered it into states like Pakistan. (who took the Indus Plain) in 1947.

And that insulting term '3rd world country' term was only invented and used from Cold War era onwards, not in WW2 or interwar period. Your lack of knowledge is appalling.

 

[Alexander the third]

Britain imported little from india. Rubber was imported from malysia but india provided a million volunteers for the indian army which fought in egypt and burma.

 

[TheOrangeGuy]

Didn't the UK have millions of hectar "locked" for future farming, in case they need it? I'm pretty sure I saw a documentary about how well prepared they were for if food became scarse, but they never needed to implement it, so I don't know how important really, more people in the fields would mean less in factories I guess.

 

[jamesd]

India produced a lot of food, and that is why Churchill kept snatching it and shipped it out of India before someone could oppose. And this caused the enormous and disastrous 1943 Bengal Famine. Punjab produced more grain than majority of western Europe combined - which is why a lot of food was cut off from India with a huge shortage once the British splintered it into states like Pakistan. (who took the Indus Plain) in 1947.

And that insulting term '3rd world country' term was only invented and used from Cold War era onwards, not in WW2 or interwar period. Your lack of knowledge is appalling.

I did say I wasn't sure that India had provided much food to Britain. I've now done some reading and prior to the war India did not produce enough food to feed itself - about 2% was imported, including large amounts of rice from Burma which was of course lost in 1942. In terms of rice and other grains, India normally imported a net of 1-2 million tons each year up to 1941/42 with more than 4 million tons in 39/40. In 42/43 it had net exports of 0.62 million tons. British imports of wheat, flour, barley etc were 8.5 million tonnes in 1939 dropping to 4.7-5.4 million in the years 42-45. This means India's net export of grains in 42/43 came to about 12% of Britain's imports in that same year. Another way of looking at it is that British consumption of grains dropped by 3.5m tons over the war years, with a population of 50m (70kg per person), while India's consumption dropped by 2.7m tons with a population of about 300m (9 kg per person).

I pulled these stats from a paper written by an Indian professor at an Australian university. He was very critical of Britain's & Australia's actions in 1943 and I won't post the title of his paper as to do so may verge on breaching forum rules. I mention this so that people know this is not a paper biased towards Britain.

Re the term 3rd world country it was not intended to be insulting but descriptive. What term would you prefer I use? Under developed, poor, technologically lagging? I note that subsistence farming is still a significant contributor to Indian GDP today.

 

[panzerzombie]

India produced a lot of food, and that is why Churchill kept snatching it and shipped it out of India before someone could oppose. And this caused the enormous and disastrous 1943 Bengal Famine. Punjab produced more grain than majority of western Europe combined - which is why a lot of food was cut off from India with a huge shortage once the British splintered it into states like Pakistan. (who took the Indus Plain) in 1947.

And that insulting term '3rd world country' term was only invented and used from Cold War era onwards, not in WW2 or interwar period. Your lack of knowledge is appalling.

I didn´t know we have to stay "in-WWII-character" when we write something here.....how dare we use "modern descriptions".....as if the "old approbiate" descriptions would have been any less offensive to the mentioned countries...