None of this was hidden. American political, British financial and Indian geopolitical history are just rarely taught together.

India and China have no paucity of cruel and exploitative histories. Both contain periods of empire building, ethnic cleansing and wrenching inequality. A better takeaway is recognizing the common impulses our economic and political systems cause in us and how they may be foreseen and mitigated.

For example, the history I just recounted followed the Seven Years' War, in which the British (among others) beat the French and Spanish (among others) [1]. (This also circles back to Paris backing the American revolution.) At the time, the Spanish dollar was the world's reserve currency and Britain a rising power. Guess how they framed their rise and predecessors' fall?

(Unnecessary aside: and they were right. The British I mean. My Indian descent obliges familiarity with British atrocities on the subcontinent and abroad. But at least we, with a competent government led largely by those descended from the indigenous at the time when the British came, can name them. She scale and continuity of the Spanish crown’s atrocities and exterminations show no such delineation nor legacy. And on the next turn, my American citizenship obliges familiarity with our illegal invasions and proliferation of war crimes. But at least we label them as much. In the time of the British Raj and America in the Philippines, that was business as usual.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War