Uncommon Wealth

WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 2023

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing

A Guardian Book of the Year

'Brilliantly arranged and rich with fresh insights' Akala

'A radical, beautifully written understanding of our history' Owen Jones

'You can't understand how Britain works today without reading it' Frankie Boyle

'A challenge to a nation living in the shadow of empire: reckon with your imperial past, or it will come back to bite you' Grace Blakeley

'This book should be part of the national curriculum' Ellie Mae O'Hagan

Britain didn't just put the empire back the way it had found it.

Uncommon Wealth is the little-known and shocking history of how Britain treated its former non-white colonies after the end of empire. It is the story of how an interconnected group of British capitalists enabled horrific inequality across the globe, profiting in colonial Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. However, the greed unleashed in this era would boomerang, now leaving many ordinary Britons wondering where their own prosperity has gone. Ranging from Jamaica to Singapore, Ghana to Britain, this is a blistering account of how buried decisions of decades past are ravaging Britain today.

Dr Kojo Koram is a lecturer at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Color Line. Prior to academia, Kojo worked in social welfare law, youth work and teaching. Kojo has written for the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Nation, Dissent, the New Statesman and Critical Legal Thinking.