Existing mainstream economic history writing on the inter-war period, while writing about Britain’s relatively earlier recovery from the Great Depression in comparison to its capitalist counterparts, have attributed it to its conducive international trade and domestic conditions and therefore as a completely unaided and autonomous process. We argue that the mainstream narrative, which completely omits the role of colonial transfers is ridden with factual and logical inconsistencies and therefore is an incomplete explanation. By drawing from the original framework of the early nationalists’ Drain Theory, we estimate the extent of tax-financed transfers from India to Britain during the inter-war years and argue that it was on the back of these transfers that Britain managed to stay afloat and even stage an earlier recovery from the Great Depression. These findings therefore establish the cruciality of the Drain from India in stabilizing the British economy in a period of crisis in capitalism and provide insight into understanding the evolution of global capitalism itself.