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It was just pure ignorance. Some of the larger impacts of colonialism: Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under

It was just pure ignorance. Some of the larger impacts of colonialism: Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism. India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence. India's revolutionaries who opposed colonialism and raised against the British were brutally killed or hanged under British rule. Anyone who spoke against the colonialism were jailed. British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today.

shas3 11y ago
Colonialism was one factor. It is not clear how India would have imbibed and benefited from the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in the absence of British presence in the subcontinent. Just a reminder that British presence started in the very late 18th century, but their true hegemony was for 90 years, between 1857 and 1947. Japan had American presence, but no hegemony and is a good counterpoint to those who claim that colonialism has benefits. A few things to note: without the British, there may never have been a coherent whole of "India" as we know today. Counterfactuals are hard, but it is hard to assume that there would necessarily have been an Indian Bismarck or Garibaldi had there been no British hegemony. Different regions and kingdoms in India would have developed differently. You would have had a few Japans, notably in the South, West coast, Northeast, and parts of the Gangetic heartland: regions which were always wealthy and/or politically stable. Whether the economy would have declined less in the absence of colonialism is really impossible to answer. But to cite colonialism as the only reason is wrong, especially since the decline coincides roughly with the scientific and industrial revolutions that occurred in Western Europe and later, America.
- Riod 11y ago
  Wrong. From wikipedia: Company rule in India (sometimes, Company Raj,[1] "raj," lit. "rule" in Hindi[2]) refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Sirajuddaulah surrendered his dominions to the Company, Also India pre 1947 was a civilization; a 2000+ year old one. Closest analogy is Europe. Do people vex about the existence of Belgium (a small country)? India went from exporting finished goods to exporting raw materials from the 1780's to the 1860's. Coincidence? To repeat what I said below: the industrial revolution in textiles kicked into high gear in England in 1822, a good 50 years or so after India was under effective company rule. And textiles was an industry where India had a comparative advantage before company rule. Wonder where Britain got all that raw material to make textiles from? From wikipedia: During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods.[20] More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports.[21] Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896.
  - douche 11y ago
    So British industrialists climbed up the value ladder, as you do when you're trying to create wealth. They did the same thing with porcelain, once they figured out the process. Right around 1830 was when the American Southern cotton plantation system took off, and more or less completely displaced Indian cotton on the world market[1] because it was cheap, cotton gins were efficient, and it was a whole lot closer to ship it from Mobile or Charleston to Birmingham, than to go all the way down around the Cape and back. Opium became a huge export for India because it was the only thing other than bullion the Brits (and Americans, and Dutch, and Portuguese) could hit on to trade profitably in the China market. Then, later, that cash crop was undercut by cheaper product produced in Turkey, and by Chinese domestic production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#Effects_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#Effects_in_the_Unit...
    - Riod 11y ago
      Point is they climbed it by having a subjugated captive population who were not even allowed to make salt let alone textiles[1]. That population was forced to plant cash crops (primarily cotton) that could then be exported to Britain at fixed prices and sent back as textiles. There is about 70 years from the start of company rule to the 1830's. If you're not allowed to manufacture textiles in that time period, what exactly do you think would happen? You'd maintain a comparative advantage? On opium: In India, its cultivation, as well as the manufacture and traffic to China, were subject to the British East India Company (BEIC), as a strict monopoly of the British government.[7] Opium, like most industries, only benefited the British. So it would be more accurate for you to say the British used the Indians to start exporting opium. So lets recap. People that mostly export textiles suddenly finds themselves 1) unable to make their own textiles, 2) forced to plant cotton and other crops for sole benefit of the British. So you have a whole civilization barred from selling finished goods. Gee wonder what happens to them. [1] Taxation of salt has occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. When the Crown took over the administration of India from the Company in 1858, the taxes were not replaced. The stringent salt taxes imposed by the British were vehemently condemned by the Indian public. In 1885, at the first session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, a prominent Congress Leader S.A.Swaminatha Iyer raised the issue of the salt tax.[1] There were further protests throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries culminating in Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha in 1930. This sathyagraha was followed by other sathyagrahas in other parts of the country. After the arrest of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu lead the sathyagrahis to Dharasana Salt works in Gujarat and was arrested by the police. C. Rajagopalachari broke the Salt Laws at Vedaranyam, in Madras Province in the same year. Thousands courted arrest and were imprisoned in large numbers. The administration eventually relented and invited Mahatma Gandhi to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhi's Dandi March got wide news coverage and proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement. The salt tax, however, continued to remain in effect and was repealed only when Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of the Interim Government in 1946.
jgalt212 11y ago
>Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism. Please cite this very interesting piece of information.
- douche 11y ago
  All the charts that show this are dealing in percentage of world GDP. This is really a meaningless statistic, and by itself doesn't show anything one way or the other about colonialism. Until the beginning of the industrial revolution, China and India were always 1 & 2 in GDP, because they were 1 & 2 in population. The biggest innovation of the Industrial Revolution was decoupling production from population. Est. world GDP, 1750: $128 billion - India @ ~22% = $28 billion Est. world GDP, 1950: $4 trillion - India @ ~ 4% = $163 billion [1] https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
  - guyraput 11y ago
    You are right; the largest gains in global economic output where made after the industrial revolution. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/quantifying-history http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/quantifyin... But you can't ignore British policies that decimated India's manufacturing capability before that. Like what's been written below..
- guyraput 11y ago
  Sourced from here http://www.economist.com/node/16834943 http://www.economist.com/node/16834943 You would enjoy this as well -https://www.change.org/p/british-government-england-uk-india-demands-reparations-for-colonial-era-damage https://www.change.org/p/british-government-england-uk-india...
vithlani 11y ago
> Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism. Source? And are you sure these are reliable, given we are talking about things that happened a 100 or more years ago? > India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance Indian healthcare????? Are you serious?? So.. what... things like hospitals? Doctors? Medical welfare? They had all those before whitey rolled in? Nobody told my great-grandfather who constantly suffered from hip related problems due to horse riding accident. He found no care whatsoever and had to take opium to manage the pain. >India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence. So you are saying that before colonialism, Indian people could read and write better? The existing rulers, nobility, upper class, Brahmans were actually interested in a literate population? >British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today. There is a Divide and Rule policy for sure, but it is one instigated and maintained by the current set of Indian politicians who rule in the name of religion, caste and personality cults. Please explain why more than 75% of the Indian population lives in border line poverty 60 years after the colonials left. I will tell you why: they are in that state because that was their default state before the colonials came along. The new leaders have no gain whatsoever in changing this and so it stays that way. You cannot keep on blaming other people for your troubles 60 years after the fact. They left, India had problem and those problems have only gotten worse or stayed the same. I do not support colonialism in any way and regard it as an evil period. That doesn't mean I am blind to what went before it. And what is happening now.

shas3 11y ago

Colonialism was one factor. It is not clear how India would have imbibed and benefited from the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in the absence of British presence in the subcontinent. Just a reminder that British presence started in the very late 18th century, but their true hegemony was for 90 years, between 1857 and 1947. Japan had American presence, but no hegemony and is a good counterpoint to those who claim that colonialism has benefits. A few things to note: without the British, there may never have been a coherent whole of "India" as we know today. Counterfactuals are hard, but it is hard to assume that there would necessarily have been an Indian Bismarck or Garibaldi had there been no British hegemony. Different regions and kingdoms in India would have developed differently. You would have had a few Japans, notably in the South, West coast, Northeast, and parts of the Gangetic heartland: regions which were always wealthy and/or politically stable. Whether the economy would have declined less in the absence of colonialism is really impossible to answer. But to cite colonialism as the only reason is wrong, especially since the decline coincides roughly with the scientific and industrial revolutions that occurred in Western Europe and later, America.

Riod 11y ago
Wrong. From wikipedia: Company rule in India (sometimes, Company Raj,[1] "raj," lit. "rule" in Hindi[2]) refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Sirajuddaulah surrendered his dominions to the Company, Also India pre 1947 was a civilization; a 2000+ year old one. Closest analogy is Europe. Do people vex about the existence of Belgium (a small country)? India went from exporting finished goods to exporting raw materials from the 1780's to the 1860's. Coincidence? To repeat what I said below: the industrial revolution in textiles kicked into high gear in England in 1822, a good 50 years or so after India was under effective company rule. And textiles was an industry where India had a comparative advantage before company rule. Wonder where Britain got all that raw material to make textiles from? From wikipedia: During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods.[20] More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports.[21] Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896.
- douche 11y ago
  So British industrialists climbed up the value ladder, as you do when you're trying to create wealth. They did the same thing with porcelain, once they figured out the process. Right around 1830 was when the American Southern cotton plantation system took off, and more or less completely displaced Indian cotton on the world market[1] because it was cheap, cotton gins were efficient, and it was a whole lot closer to ship it from Mobile or Charleston to Birmingham, than to go all the way down around the Cape and back. Opium became a huge export for India because it was the only thing other than bullion the Brits (and Americans, and Dutch, and Portuguese) could hit on to trade profitably in the China market. Then, later, that cash crop was undercut by cheaper product produced in Turkey, and by Chinese domestic production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#Effects_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#Effects_in_the_Unit...
  - Riod 11y ago
    Point is they climbed it by having a subjugated captive population who were not even allowed to make salt let alone textiles[1]. That population was forced to plant cash crops (primarily cotton) that could then be exported to Britain at fixed prices and sent back as textiles. There is about 70 years from the start of company rule to the 1830's. If you're not allowed to manufacture textiles in that time period, what exactly do you think would happen? You'd maintain a comparative advantage? On opium: In India, its cultivation, as well as the manufacture and traffic to China, were subject to the British East India Company (BEIC), as a strict monopoly of the British government.[7] Opium, like most industries, only benefited the British. So it would be more accurate for you to say the British used the Indians to start exporting opium. So lets recap. People that mostly export textiles suddenly finds themselves 1) unable to make their own textiles, 2) forced to plant cotton and other crops for sole benefit of the British. So you have a whole civilization barred from selling finished goods. Gee wonder what happens to them. [1] Taxation of salt has occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. When the Crown took over the administration of India from the Company in 1858, the taxes were not replaced. The stringent salt taxes imposed by the British were vehemently condemned by the Indian public. In 1885, at the first session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, a prominent Congress Leader S.A.Swaminatha Iyer raised the issue of the salt tax.[1] There were further protests throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries culminating in Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha in 1930. This sathyagraha was followed by other sathyagrahas in other parts of the country. After the arrest of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu lead the sathyagrahis to Dharasana Salt works in Gujarat and was arrested by the police. C. Rajagopalachari broke the Salt Laws at Vedaranyam, in Madras Province in the same year. Thousands courted arrest and were imprisoned in large numbers. The administration eventually relented and invited Mahatma Gandhi to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhi's Dandi March got wide news coverage and proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement. The salt tax, however, continued to remain in effect and was repealed only when Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of the Interim Government in 1946.

jgalt212 11y ago

>Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism. Please cite this very interesting piece of information.

douche 11y ago
All the charts that show this are dealing in percentage of world GDP. This is really a meaningless statistic, and by itself doesn't show anything one way or the other about colonialism. Until the beginning of the industrial revolution, China and India were always 1 & 2 in GDP, because they were 1 & 2 in population. The biggest innovation of the Industrial Revolution was decoupling production from population. Est. world GDP, 1750: $128 billion - India @ ~22% = $28 billion Est. world GDP, 1950: $4 trillion - India @ ~ 4% = $163 billion [1] https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
- guyraput 11y ago
  You are right; the largest gains in global economic output where made after the industrial revolution. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/quantifying-history http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/quantifyin... But you can't ignore British policies that decimated India's manufacturing capability before that. Like what's been written below..
guyraput 11y ago
Sourced from here http://www.economist.com/node/16834943 http://www.economist.com/node/16834943 You would enjoy this as well -https://www.change.org/p/british-government-england-uk-india-demands-reparations-for-colonial-era-damage https://www.change.org/p/british-government-england-uk-india...

vithlani 11y ago

> Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism. Source? And are you sure these are reliable, given we are talking about things that happened a 100 or more years ago? > India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance Indian healthcare????? Are you serious?? So.. what... things like hospitals? Doctors? Medical welfare? They had all those before whitey rolled in? Nobody told my great-grandfather who constantly suffered from hip related problems due to horse riding accident. He found no care whatsoever and had to take opium to manage the pain. >India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence. So you are saying that before colonialism, Indian people could read and write better? The existing rulers, nobility, upper class, Brahmans were actually interested in a literate population? >British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today. There is a Divide and Rule policy for sure, but it is one instigated and maintained by the current set of Indian politicians who rule in the name of religion, caste and personality cults. Please explain why more than 75% of the Indian population lives in border line poverty 60 years after the colonials left. I will tell you why: they are in that state because that was their default state before the colonials came along. The new leaders have no gain whatsoever in changing this and so it stays that way. You cannot keep on blaming other people for your troubles 60 years after the fact. They left, India had problem and those problems have only gotten worse or stayed the same. I do not support colonialism in any way and regard it as an evil period. That doesn't mean I am blind to what went before it. And what is happening now.