sentences:  Indian Marxist economist Utsa Patnaik, who has done a deep research on the fiscal relations between colonial India and Britain, calculated in her essay published in Columbia University Press that Britain drained a total of £9.2 trillion (equal to $45 trillion) from India during the period 1765 to 1938.Like the other European colonists, the French began their colonisation via commercial activities, starting with the establishment of a factory in Surat in 1668.The French started to settle down in India in 1673, beginning with the purchase of land at Chandernagore from the Mughal Governor of Bengal, followed by the acquisition of Pondicherry from the Sultan of Bijapur the next year.