Indian economy and British colonization

Michael McIntyre mmcintyr at wppost.depaul.edu
Sat Aug 4 05:23:35 PDT 2001


On famines in India (and China and Brazil) and its relation to imperialism, see Mike Davis's _Late Victorian Holocausts_. On the broader question of India's "deindustrialization" . . . where to start? This controversy comes up again and again, with the same arguments being hashed and rehashed. You can find it at the turn of the century in the debate between Digby and Curzon. You can find it again ca. 1960 with Morris Morris (no, that is not a typo) leading the charge against Indian nationalists. It resurfaces in a different guise in the late 70s and early 80s in the mode of production debate (largely found in _Economic and Political Weekly_ and later collected in a volume published by that journal).

Very recently, though, there has been a promising contribution that may reframe the debate: Kenneth Pomeranz's _The Great Divergence_. Largely a comparison of Europe and China, India comes in for some discussion as well. In Pomeranz's view, the "proto-industrialization" that one can find in China, Europe, and to some extent in India, ca. 1750 was a historical cul-de-sac that was in each place hitting ecological constraints, with land being the scarce factor of production in each case. (Proto-industrialization was not so advanced as to make capital scarce, and the greater population densities it allowed made labor very abundant).

Europe - particularly England - emerged from this cul-de-sac for two reasons: coal and colonies. England happened to have large reserves of coal near centers of production (in contrast, Chinese coal was far from its production centers). Coal removed the ecological constraint that required a great deal more land for more fuel (i.e., timber). American colonies, worked by slave labor, removed the constraint of needing more land to gro more food. Since China (and by extension India) had neither advantage, its proto-industrialization did not provide a breakthrough to industrialization.

Pomeranz notes, in passing, that British imperial policy made things even worse for India than for China, but the crucial point is that India was not on the verge of becoming an industrial power. A mixed verdict.

Michael McIntyre


>>> afenelon at zaz.com.br 08/03/01 20:39 PM >>>

-Mr. Polya teaches biochemistry in the Latrobe University (Australia). He sent me a good answer to a question I made him and, in addition, asked me to sent this following message to whoever I can. I decided to forward all the message, since it´s quite interesting. Maybe someone in the list could add something about India economy during the Bristish colonization.

Alexandre Fenelon



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