This conclusion seems to use highly questionable methodology. Why should England's in the 16th and 17th centuries mortality rates be a good assumption for the

This conclusion seems to use highly questionable methodology. Why should England's in the 16th and 17th centuries mortality rates be a good assumption for the baseline pre colonial mortality rate of India? Why 16th as opposed to 14th or 15th? I can't help but become more suspicious of the author's intentions when they lay blame on capitalism when Empire and Colonialism were not sole domains of market economies but also the Communist Soviet Union which had inflicted exactly that onto Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe. >The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. This claim in particular from the source author's seems particularly hard to believe. Make no mistake, the Bengal famine of 1943 was in no small part caused by the British Empire. But arbitrarily comparing death rates and declaring full culpability goes beyond belief.