A friend of mine ran an analogy by me which really resonated. Perhaps others have drawn the comparison. I don’t know.
In the late 18th century what would later evolve into the British Raj was coalescing into full British domination of the Indian subcontinent – especially after two key battles in 1757 and 1764 waged not by Britain but a private company called the British East India Company. That made it possible for what were often British men of relatively modest origins to build almost unimaginably large fortunes. Life in India was a matter of extremes for British operatives of the East India Company, a joint stock company which owned what were in effect or sorta Britain’s Indian colonies. Countless young Brits went out to India and died in short order. But if they could avoid dying in a relatively few years they could build these unimaginable fortunes. None of them wanted to stay. Virtually no Britons died of old age in India at the time. The whole point was to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible and get back to Great Britain while they were still alive. Then they would pour that money into an estate and land.
They were called ‘nabobs’, a corruption of ‘nawab’, a title in the Mughal Empire which originally referred to a provincial governor but evolved into something more like a hereditary lord as Mughal rule disintegrated.
