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> the colonial system was set up to prevent India industralising Hardly. The colonial system started to evolve from approx 1600 [0] but industrialisation [1] d

• pradn 6y ago
  Colonialism didn't seriously arrive in India until 1750, and it took until 1800-15 for the British East India Company to consolidate it's control over the subcontinent. Before 1750, the Company was a straightforward trading company, sharing trading rights with the Portuguese, French, and the traders of the Indian Ocean rim. After 1750, they were able to seize tax-collecting rights in Bengal, one of the most prosperous areas of the Mughal Empire. They used tax revenue on agriculture in the fertile Bengal delta to fund further trading and military activities around the subcontinent. Their policy was often mercantile. They forced wages down, drove exacting standards for manufacturing textiles, and engaged in monopsonistic policy. So, I agree - an accurate statement would be to say "English involvement in India came out of the prevailing ideology of mercantilism, and it then grew into a colonial state". The colonial state did lead to India's deindustrialization - ex: the flourishing textile industries of the subcontinent were not allowed to modernize. But counterfactuals are hard. (I still think an area of the world at the forefront of textile production for thousands of years would not have gone gently into the good night without a fight.)