Since when were British and French colonial empires no longer viable?

I am interesting in how India was profitable for the British Empire. ...
I can understand that India was profitable for the Brits in 18th and early 19th centuries, but in the first half of 20th century, that was just a impowerished big country, with a small industry, and a bulk of population were poor preasants ......
The other part was that India's poor peasants provided very cheap soldiers to garrison the rest of the empire at a cheap cost without requiring post WWII conscription that was unpopular back home.
 
To give a value of Empire to the British: in 1908 imports and exports were:

Empire £2,000,000,000
German Empire £729,000,000
USA £685,000,000
France £539,000,000
Russia £205,000,000
A-H £195,000,000
Italy £158,000,000

The Empire exceeded the next 3: Germany, USA and France combined.

Within the Empire, the trade breakdown was:

UK £1,304,000,000
India £240,000,000
Australia £125,000,000
Canada £117,000,000
NZ £36,000,000
South Africa £76,000,000
Egypt £50,000,000

Most of this Trade was transported in British hulls, who were also transporting £400,000,000 of foreign trade aswell. Projections were that German import-export trade was going to over take the UK's by 1926 (without WW1) suggesting that GB would need to start introducing some form of Imperial Preference.
 
What, via the South Atlantic?
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I don't think its really on the straight line to South America so irrelevant after steam ships take over.
 
Saint Helena was on the way to Brazil, not India.

Its on the way to the East Indies by sailing ship.

In regard to the OP question I think it bears repeating that while many colonies were fiscal burdens they were economic positives (from the colonial perspective) into the early 50's [citation needed].
But what one might see in the 50's and 60's is the European buisnesses being replaced by American ones so the CBA at this point disfavours continuing to bear the admin costs on the part of the Europeans, and the transfer of these costs onto the businesses in the newly independent colonies.
 
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