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> In the case of India, with the exception of Islamic or European colonisation, much of the royal wealth can be attributed to trade and Kings/Queens building in

> In the case of India, with the exception of Islamic or European colonisation, much of the royal wealth can be attributed to trade and Kings/Queens building infrastructure, cities and trade routes. Temples which also acted as banks financing large merchant navies that had established trade routes all over the Indian ocean territory. I don't understand this "Indian exceptionalism" point of view that seems more prevalent these days. I suppose if you retroactively apply some national idea of "india" that was foreign to people living in the Indian subcontinent at the time, and ignore all the plundering and conquest that routinely and commonly happened between those states. States like the mughal empire didn't spread and conquest thanks to sunshine and rainbows. Even looking at the kohinoor itself it was routinely stolen and taken by force by different factions across India. And just like the rest of the world (china as you point out but also very much Europe as well) India of course benefited through trade as well. But I don't see how there is anything unique or different about it.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
The current Indian practice of retroactively applying modern nationhood to prior conflicts to erase them as wars has plenty of historical context. Under that paradigm, there was never war on the Indian subcontinent. Just domestic skirmishes. Between armies. Raised by kings. Of…provinces?
sinyug 5y ago
> I don't understand this "Indian exceptionalism" point of view that seems more prevalent these days. I suppose if you retroactively apply some national idea of "india" that was foreign to people living in the Indian subcontinent at the time, and ignore all the plundering and conquest that routinely and commonly happened between those states. A nation and a state are two completely different concepts. A nation is peoples, tribes and ethnic groups that, in spite of differences, have something in common that binds them. A state is an ephemeral entity: lines on a map drawn by a power that will fade in time and be replaced with something else. So, while there have been multiple "states" and kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent over millennia, the Indian "nation" has always been there.
- JetSetWilly 5y ago
  > A nation is peoples, tribes and ethnic groups that, in spite of differences, have something in common that binds them. What is that then? Because it can't be race, religion, language etc etc. Really the nation of "India" was created by Britain. It is perfectly easy to imagine an alternative history where the Raj never existed, states in the Indian subcontinent weren't united and so no modern Indian nation as we know it today was ever birthed. In this view, the Indian "nation" would be like the European "nation" - a fiction. Just because a bunch of people live there with some similar religion and some cultural similarities at a very high level, does not a nation make. I can imagine in 100 years European nationalists of some new EU state trying to invent a history of the European "nation" that predates their state all through history. But it is just stories with no basis in reality.
  - sinyug 5y ago
    > What is that then? Because it can't be race, religion, language etc etc. It can be all of those or none of those. A tribe or ethnic group can be a nation by itself. They could join other similar peoples to form a nation if there is strong cultural commonality. A bunch of anime-loving randos living in the same apartment complex does not make them a nation. > Really the nation of "India" was created by Britain. The state or political entity that is India is a descendant of the Raj. To say that a people who have no sense of their own nation created the Indian nation is a joke. What you can say is that the political entity that represents the English Crown created the political entity that is the Republic of India. > the European "nation" - a fiction. The European "nation" IS a fiction. There is no shared ethnicity, language, religion or culture. That is why the project is doomed to fail. Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Europeanism etc will never work because there is no glue that can bind the different nations together.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > The European "nation" IS a fiction. Let's apply the same logic to India > There is no shared ethnicity, India has more than two thousand ethnic groups > language, There are 22 officially recognised languages in India. That's out of 122 major languages spoken in India. > religion 79.8% of the population of India practices Hinduism, 14.2% adheres to Islam, 2.3% adheres to Christianity, 1.7% adheres to Sikhism, 0.7% adheres to Buddhism, and 0.4% adheres to Jainism > or culture. Definition of culture is too complex, but I'd say it's as varied (or probably more varied than) European.
naruvimama 5y ago
>> if you retroactively apply some national idea of "india" that was foreign to people living That is a colonial view point, surely the Indians traded with the Romans or the Ancient Greeks, they were distinctly seen as Indians/Hindus and I am sure the Indians were aware of it. >> the mughal empire As I mentioned, they are part of the Islamic expansionism. The "mughals" famously rallied around islam, extracted tributes and jiziya and also sent tributes to the caliph (in Afganistan/Iran?). >> very much Europe as well Until very recently much of the European wealth can be attributed to colonisation, territorial expansionism (Americas) & slavery. The trade at best can be described as mercantilism (checkout salt tax). I was just pointing out to the previous poster that the wealth of Ancient India/China can be attributed to trade and infrastructure, very much like the world today. And a lot of it including the royal jewels (subject in question) can be attributed to plunder, piracy or colonisation. So the idea that all kingdoms made their wealth through plunder is false. Plunder and mindless extraction are very efficient way to expand an empire, but not all empires are built that way and perhaps not very efficient or sustainable today.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > Until very recently much of the European wealth can be attributed to colonisation, territorial expansionism (Americas) & slavery. The trade at best can be described as mercantilism (checkout salt tax). Northern European growth went above trend for the rest of civilization starting in the 1300s, well before the Age of Exploration or colonization. Things accelerated with the Great Divergence, when the Industrial Revolution spread starting in the 1800s. Colonialism was a result of becoming rich and powerful far more than a cause. See the lack of effects on GDP per capita with losing an empire after WW2, or how Nordic countries were near as rich as Britain or Austria-Hungary as rich as Germany. > Accounting for the ‘Little Divergence’ What drove economic growth in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800? > The Little Divergence is the process of differential economic growth within Europe in the period between 1300 and 1800, during which the North Sea Area developed into the most prosperous and dynamic part of the Continent. We test various hypotheses about the causes of the Little Divergence, using new data and focusing on trends in GDP per capita. The results are that institutional changes (in particular the rise of active Parliaments), human capital formation and structural change are the primary drivers of the growth that occurred, which contrast sharply with previous findings by Robert Allen (who however focused on real wages as dependent variable). We also test for the role of religion (the spread of Protestantism): this has affected human capital formation, but does not in itself have an impact on growth. Moreover, we find an insignificant effect of the land-labour ratio, which shows the limitations of the Malthusian model for understanding the Little Divergence. https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0046.html#:~:text=The%20Little%20Divergence%20is%20the%20process%20of%20differential,and%20focusing%20on%20trends%20in%20GDP%20per%20capita https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0046.html#:~:text=The%2....

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

The current Indian practice of retroactively applying modern nationhood to prior conflicts to erase them as wars has plenty of historical context. Under that paradigm, there was never war on the Indian subcontinent. Just domestic skirmishes. Between armies. Raised by kings. Of…provinces?

sinyug 5y ago

> I don't understand this "Indian exceptionalism" point of view that seems more prevalent these days. I suppose if you retroactively apply some national idea of "india" that was foreign to people living in the Indian subcontinent at the time, and ignore all the plundering and conquest that routinely and commonly happened between those states. A nation and a state are two completely different concepts. A nation is peoples, tribes and ethnic groups that, in spite of differences, have something in common that binds them. A state is an ephemeral entity: lines on a map drawn by a power that will fade in time and be replaced with something else. So, while there have been multiple "states" and kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent over millennia, the Indian "nation" has always been there.

JetSetWilly 5y ago
> A nation is peoples, tribes and ethnic groups that, in spite of differences, have something in common that binds them. What is that then? Because it can't be race, religion, language etc etc. Really the nation of "India" was created by Britain. It is perfectly easy to imagine an alternative history where the Raj never existed, states in the Indian subcontinent weren't united and so no modern Indian nation as we know it today was ever birthed. In this view, the Indian "nation" would be like the European "nation" - a fiction. Just because a bunch of people live there with some similar religion and some cultural similarities at a very high level, does not a nation make. I can imagine in 100 years European nationalists of some new EU state trying to invent a history of the European "nation" that predates their state all through history. But it is just stories with no basis in reality.
- sinyug 5y ago
  > What is that then? Because it can't be race, religion, language etc etc. It can be all of those or none of those. A tribe or ethnic group can be a nation by itself. They could join other similar peoples to form a nation if there is strong cultural commonality. A bunch of anime-loving randos living in the same apartment complex does not make them a nation. > Really the nation of "India" was created by Britain. The state or political entity that is India is a descendant of the Raj. To say that a people who have no sense of their own nation created the Indian nation is a joke. What you can say is that the political entity that represents the English Crown created the political entity that is the Republic of India. > the European "nation" - a fiction. The European "nation" IS a fiction. There is no shared ethnicity, language, religion or culture. That is why the project is doomed to fail. Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Europeanism etc will never work because there is no glue that can bind the different nations together.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > The European "nation" IS a fiction. Let's apply the same logic to India > There is no shared ethnicity, India has more than two thousand ethnic groups > language, There are 22 officially recognised languages in India. That's out of 122 major languages spoken in India. > religion 79.8% of the population of India practices Hinduism, 14.2% adheres to Islam, 2.3% adheres to Christianity, 1.7% adheres to Sikhism, 0.7% adheres to Buddhism, and 0.4% adheres to Jainism > or culture. Definition of culture is too complex, but I'd say it's as varied (or probably more varied than) European.

naruvimama 5y ago

>> if you retroactively apply some national idea of "india" that was foreign to people living That is a colonial view point, surely the Indians traded with the Romans or the Ancient Greeks, they were distinctly seen as Indians/Hindus and I am sure the Indians were aware of it. >> the mughal empire As I mentioned, they are part of the Islamic expansionism. The "mughals" famously rallied around islam, extracted tributes and jiziya and also sent tributes to the caliph (in Afganistan/Iran?). >> very much Europe as well Until very recently much of the European wealth can be attributed to colonisation, territorial expansionism (Americas) & slavery. The trade at best can be described as mercantilism (checkout salt tax). I was just pointing out to the previous poster that the wealth of Ancient India/China can be attributed to trade and infrastructure, very much like the world today. And a lot of it including the royal jewels (subject in question) can be attributed to plunder, piracy or colonisation. So the idea that all kingdoms made their wealth through plunder is false. Plunder and mindless extraction are very efficient way to expand an empire, but not all empires are built that way and perhaps not very efficient or sustainable today.

barry-cotter 5y ago
> Until very recently much of the European wealth can be attributed to colonisation, territorial expansionism (Americas) & slavery. The trade at best can be described as mercantilism (checkout salt tax). Northern European growth went above trend for the rest of civilization starting in the 1300s, well before the Age of Exploration or colonization. Things accelerated with the Great Divergence, when the Industrial Revolution spread starting in the 1800s. Colonialism was a result of becoming rich and powerful far more than a cause. See the lack of effects on GDP per capita with losing an empire after WW2, or how Nordic countries were near as rich as Britain or Austria-Hungary as rich as Germany. > Accounting for the ‘Little Divergence’ What drove economic growth in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800? > The Little Divergence is the process of differential economic growth within Europe in the period between 1300 and 1800, during which the North Sea Area developed into the most prosperous and dynamic part of the Continent. We test various hypotheses about the causes of the Little Divergence, using new data and focusing on trends in GDP per capita. The results are that institutional changes (in particular the rise of active Parliaments), human capital formation and structural change are the primary drivers of the growth that occurred, which contrast sharply with previous findings by Robert Allen (who however focused on real wages as dependent variable). We also test for the role of religion (the spread of Protestantism): this has affected human capital formation, but does not in itself have an impact on growth. Moreover, we find an insignificant effect of the land-labour ratio, which shows the limitations of the Malthusian model for understanding the Little Divergence. https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0046.html#:~:text=The%20Little%20Divergence%20is%20the%20process%20of%20differential,and%20focusing%20on%20trends%20in%20GDP%20per%20capita https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0046.html#:~:text=The%2....