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New research on the cost of colonization to India

aljazeera.com

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Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#91

Post by nonamechicken »

sachdevap wrote: post #70
jvsg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect IMHO. The Mughals had ruled over an area greater than India's current area. The Marathas too had almost replaced Mughals after their downfall, and the British replaced Marathas. There was infighting in a few kingdoms towards the south and the east, and that's where the British gained their initial territory. There was a concept of a united India/Hindustan/Bharat/Aryavart in Ancient times.

You can read about the disintegration of the Mughal empire after Aurangzeb here: http://www.historydiscussion.net/empires/later-mughals-and-d... The Marathas never controlled an "undivided India" given the extent of their empire at it's peak: https://www.mapsofindia.com/history/maratha-empire.html Not to mention, even Akbar did not have the North east and the southernmost parts of India. The rise of the Sikh empire,…

I don't know much about the history of India. But this video shows a huge part of present day India and Pakistan being part of the Mughal empire in 1705.

Video: https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=628 (at 10:28).

Some other interesting time lines from a union of India perspective from this video:

Maurya Empire: 270 BCE (at 2:01, https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=122)

Delhi Sultanate: 1344 (at 8:44 https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=524)

Edit: Found another video that matches with the above video regarding Mughal Empire: https://youtu.be/wYu2jyVTSc8?t=76 (at 1:16).

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#92

Post by dhbradshaw »

dragonwriter wrote: post #27
dhbradshaw wrote: post #24

The interesting thing is that as far as colonists go, I think the Brits were the best there were. Better be colonized by them than by the Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc in terms of your subsequent national success.

> The interesting thing is that as far as colonists go, I think the Brits were the best there were. Better be colonized by them than by the Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc in terms of your subsequent national success. Outside of India and a couple other examples, though, the “subsequent national success” is of the ex-British colonists, not the colonized people, who are destroyed or marginalized inside what was once…

I'm thinking more of Africa, where you had the colonies side by side. On average, the British colonies did better. And, probably because they were already hardened to disease, the natives tended to stick around and keep their land more.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#93

Post by tomcam »

diffoperator wrote: post #42
throwayasdf23 wrote: post #28

This is mostly nonsense. 1) The 5% return that produced the $45T figure is significantly higher than the expected return on capital for the vast majority of that period(which includes risk and is not comparable to modern returns). Furthermore, there would be no place to put that money to try to extract that return. The notion that the 18th century even had a safe positive return on capital for large periods of time f…

Why did you create a throwaway to post this?

Probably because it’s sure to get downvoted and flagged. Deviation from the hive mind is not appreciated here. As I write this my karma is 5497. Let’s see how it plummets.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#94

Post by drieddust »

justboxing wrote: post #19

I was in India last month after being away for over 2 decades. Visited Calcutta for the very first time. Our Driver and Tour Guide at the Taj took us around the city and told us about a lot of history about the City. At one point he said that over 1 million people live on the sidewalks (called footpaths) in Calcutta. I have seen abject poverty in India while growing up there, but not to this level. There are generati…

In some sense British actually never left.

British ensured the succession to a loyal dynasty which kept making the country poorer by faux socialism and lack of governance skills until Mr. PV Narasimha Rao appeared on the scene and actually did something to gently nudge India onto global stage. Ironically credit still went to the family and he was sidelined as soon as new prince was ready to take over the reign.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#95

Post by enitihas »

British rule being a net positive for India is an even bigger joke than David Cameron being the best British prime minister of all time. My history teacher showed us the famous trade triangle involving China->Britan-India. Chinese tea to Britain, Indian opium to China, and British Raj(rule) to India.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#96

Post by known »

Why Britain Doesn’t Owe India Reparations http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/29/the-countervie...

And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Caste owe Reparations to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class in India since http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no... and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shashi-tharoor/caste-wont-disa...

And check which Caste is looting India? https://www.quora.com/Which-caste-is-looting-India/answer/Ad...

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#97

Post by drieddust »

gumby wrote: post #74
drieddust wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play their little game of "divide and rule". The fact that entire region was called Bharat escapes you I think. Just before British India was centrally organized and ruled by Mughals and Marathas so your argument does not stand. As far as "divide and rule" is concerned, due to the vastness of India regional leadership was always delegated. British…

> The fact that entire region was called Bharat... I don't think that important fact inherently implies a unity that was never there. The(roughly defined) region called "Europe" has never been under the control of a unitary state or empire, even in the times of the Romans.

Europe is a continent and not a country and Romans did rule almost entire continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#/media/File:Roman...

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#98

Post by iguy »

justboxing wrote: post #87
justboxing wrote: post #19

I was in India last month after being away for over 2 decades. Visited Calcutta for the very first time. Our Driver and Tour Guide at the Taj took us around the city and told us about a lot of history about the City. At one point he said that over 1 million people live on the sidewalks (called footpaths) in Calcutta. I have seen abject poverty in India while growing up there, but not to this level. There are generati…

HN is not letting me edit, so here's the source: [ From the Museum Plaque / Card]. This is a photo I took when I was there. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/theShiva/public-domain/mas... The only thing incorrect in my original statement was, it was the province of Bengal (now the state?), not Calcutta. Please read this entire thing. I've typed out the text in the photo verbatin. Last line says it all. The Colonial I…

Thanks. But again, beware of the two meanings of rich/poor.

> "India's wealthiest province, ... rich in muslin, silk yarn"

i.e. rich in luxury goods, crafts serving the 1%. That's what the company was after, because their entire shipping capacity was like a few modern trucks per year, so only super-valuable goods made sense. (And I think you'll find that the top 1% of Bengalis still live pretty well.)

> "abject poverty ... generations of Indians living on the sidewalks"

i.e. the poorest people. That they were poor in 1650 too wasn't really worth writing down: they were peasants, peasants were poor.

That other provinces contributed so little tax in 1850s is really an indication of how little ruling was going on. Sure they got to paint the whole map pink & keep the french out, but (at that time) the company was only a few thousand people. They weren't exactly overseeing the 5-year plan in every village.

I think I've been to the same museum, BTW. They had a surprisingly honest section about literature, pointing out that Bengali was the first indian language in which serious writing in the vernacular took off. And this was a blending, I'm told you see poems borrowing from oral & scriptural traditions but written in rhyming schemes taken from english poetry of the time.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#99

Post by iguy »

nonamechicken wrote: post #91
sachdevap wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read about the disintegration of the Mughal empire after Aurangzeb here: http://www.historydiscussion.net/empires/later-mughals-and-d... The Marathas never controlled an "undivided India" given the extent of their empire at it's peak: https://www.mapsofindia.com/history/maratha-empire.html Not to mention, even Akbar did not have the North east and the southernmost parts of India. The rise of the Sikh empire,…

I don't know much about the history of India. But this video shows a huge part of present day India and Pakistan being part of the Mughal empire in 1705. Video: https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=628 (at 10:28). Some other interesting time lines from a union of India perspective from this video: Maurya Empire: 270 BCE (at 2:01, https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=122 ) Delhi Sultanate: 1344 (at 8:44 https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQm…

The analogous list is to point to the Romans in 100AD, and Charlemagne in 800, and Napoleon in 1800, and conclude that clearly the EU has always been a united super-state.

The peaks were quite short-lived, often only one ruler's lifespan (natural or otherwise). There were long gaps between. There were many competing powers.

And that's OK! I mean, are we sure that the world in which some Aurangzeb figure won, and created a united (persian-speaking, 100% sunni) subcontinent, is a better place?

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#100

Post by InGodsName »

iguy wrote: post #40
InGodsName wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never read any account from travellers (from Europe/China) describing India as poor before colonialism. So, i think this article does have some validity.

If you mean ordinary people, then everywhere was poor, so travel authors would not have seen a shocking contrast. We actually have numbers on all this stuff, e.g. you can track a slow decline in day-labor wages, and IIRC (around Delhi maybe?) they decline slowly from about 1600 to 1800. There are comparable-sized rises and falls in other parts of the world, too. But all very low by modern standards. Only with industr…

Everywhere wasn't same.

"Taghaza was a commercial centre and awash with Malian gold, though Ibn Battuta did not form a favourable impression of the place, recording that it was plagued by flies and the water was brackish"[1]

Read the account of Ibn Babuta, he criticized a town not in India

But his extensive travel within India never made him write something similar about India.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta

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