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That's prior to the industrial revolution compared to after the industrial revolution. It's the same story with India, Russia and China - during that period the

That's prior to the industrial revolution compared to after the industrial revolution. It's the same story with India, Russia and China - during that period the global economy shifted from being overwhelmingly defined by agriculture and other products of manual labour (and therefore being heavily dependent on population) to being defined by industrial production. Britain treated India as an extractive economy, were involved in many abuses and crimes, and certainly held back India's development (the lack of literacy even in the 1940's is the most clear-cut example), but it's an enormous stretch to say that India under the Mughals or the other regional rulers would suddenly have made India into an industrial superpower. You can see in Russia, in the absence of any colonialism, the enormous struggle which there was to transform an economy dependent on manual labour, and with an elite dependent on feudal social structures, into a modern economy. I would separate the issues of abuses/crimes and the issues of development in the sense that the abuses were perpetrated due to moral failings, of power-hunger, racism, and greed, but development is not just about morality, it's about having the right policy and the right trajectory for society. In terms of development, the really damaging attitude was that India's ancient culture should not be disturbed to make way for industrialization, and this was an opinion shared by many well-meaning British and also Indians, pre and post independence.

dharmach 11y ago
The opinion is that the West fueled industrialization with the looted wealth from colonies.
- Brakenshire 11y ago
  I think that's almost certainly true, but again I'd go back to the example of Russia, where the elite continued to put their wealth principally into competitive status symbols rather than industrialization for almost two centuries after the industrial revolution started. Elites siphoning off wealth for their luxury, rather than investing in society or the economy, has been the rule, not the exception, for the majority of human history, and the Mughals certainly had been doing that in India for centuries before the British arrived. Empiricism and scientific enquiry also got going centuries before industrialization, I admit I don't know much about Indian intellectual life in the 17th century, but did they really have an equivalent of the Royal Society, or of Newton?
  - shripadk 11y ago
    India had a more vibrant scientific society than the West. While the West was still figuring out if the Earth was flat or not, Indian scholars had already established that the Earth was not only a spheroid but also determined the age of the Universe (See: https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape-of-the-Earth https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape... and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time). We even had Metallurgy working way before Britain learnt about working metals. I can go on and on about Indian intellectual life way before Britain came to colonize India but it makes no sense in today's context because most of these facts are either unknown or is of little interest to the West. See what Professor Dean Brown (a scientist from the United States) says about India, Sanskrit and India's Scientific heritage in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU
    - Brakenshire 11y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but I do disagree very strongly with what you have written. I was talking about scientific culture in the 17th century and you reply with the achievements of Indian civilization from thousands of years earlier. No one doubts that India is home to one of the great world civilizations, but science is empiricism, it is observation taking precedence over everything else. If this had been created in the Hindu texts we would have settled separate star systems by now. You might as well say that 12th century England had a dynamic scientific culture because they read Aristotle and Galen.
shripadk 11y ago
You can't compare Russia to India. India was welcoming to foreigners and integrated their cultures and traditions. It was the same Mughals and other regional rules who allowed the British to setup the "British East India Company" in India. Its unfortunate that the British took advantage of this gesture and misused the opportunity to colonize India. To say that India would not have industrialized without colonization is stretching it too far. India was always open to new endeavors.

dharmach 11y ago

The opinion is that the West fueled industrialization with the looted wealth from colonies.

Brakenshire 11y ago
I think that's almost certainly true, but again I'd go back to the example of Russia, where the elite continued to put their wealth principally into competitive status symbols rather than industrialization for almost two centuries after the industrial revolution started. Elites siphoning off wealth for their luxury, rather than investing in society or the economy, has been the rule, not the exception, for the majority of human history, and the Mughals certainly had been doing that in India for centuries before the British arrived. Empiricism and scientific enquiry also got going centuries before industrialization, I admit I don't know much about Indian intellectual life in the 17th century, but did they really have an equivalent of the Royal Society, or of Newton?
- shripadk 11y ago
  India had a more vibrant scientific society than the West. While the West was still figuring out if the Earth was flat or not, Indian scholars had already established that the Earth was not only a spheroid but also determined the age of the Universe (See: https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape-of-the-Earth https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape... and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time). We even had Metallurgy working way before Britain learnt about working metals. I can go on and on about Indian intellectual life way before Britain came to colonize India but it makes no sense in today's context because most of these facts are either unknown or is of little interest to the West. See what Professor Dean Brown (a scientist from the United States) says about India, Sanskrit and India's Scientific heritage in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU
  - Brakenshire 11y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but I do disagree very strongly with what you have written. I was talking about scientific culture in the 17th century and you reply with the achievements of Indian civilization from thousands of years earlier. No one doubts that India is home to one of the great world civilizations, but science is empiricism, it is observation taking precedence over everything else. If this had been created in the Hindu texts we would have settled separate star systems by now. You might as well say that 12th century England had a dynamic scientific culture because they read Aristotle and Galen.

shripadk 11y ago

You can't compare Russia to India. India was welcoming to foreigners and integrated their cultures and traditions. It was the same Mughals and other regional rules who allowed the British to setup the "British East India Company" in India. Its unfortunate that the British took advantage of this gesture and misused the opportunity to colonize India. To say that India would not have industrialized without colonization is stretching it too far. India was always open to new endeavors.