Outsourcing Unrest

This is rather similar to thoughts that have been occuring to me for a couple of years now:
Monbiot.com Outsourcing Unrest. Here's the nub of George's idea: "the current political crisis has little to do with the expenses scandal, still less to do with Gordon Brown’s leadership. It arises because our economic system can no longer extract wealth from other nations. For the past 300 years, the revolutions and reforms experienced by almost all other developed countries have been averted in Britain by foreign remittances.
The social unrest which might have transformed our politics was instead outsourced to our colonies and unwilling trading partners. The rebellions in Ireland, India, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa, Malaya, Kenya, Iran and other places we subjugated were the price of political peace in Britain. Following decolonisation, our plunder of other nations was sustained by the banks. Now, for the first time in three centuries, they can no longer deliver, and we must at last confront our problems."
Of course the argument works within a wider framework of compare and contrast with other nations, historically. And of that there is some interesting evidence particularly regarding India and China.