Economic History of India, 1857-1947

by Tirthankar Roy

This book presents a comprehensive account of the structural changes in India's economy initiated by colonial rule and globalization. It provides an understanding of the country's political and economic transition as it evolved into a stable democratic state. Capturing a crucial time span of 90 years, it attempts to connect present-day economic trends in India in the context of the country's economic history.

The book broadly covers: transition to colonialism-impact on education, law, business organization, and land rights trends in macroeconomic aggregates-national income, population, labour, savings, and investment; major sectors of development-agriculture, mining, industry, infrastructure, banking, and trade; and economic change in India post-Independence.

Reader-friendly and accessible, the third edition offers clearly-defined concepts, wider coverage of themes with a brief overview of post-Independence developments in India, and explanatory tools like reading suggestions, glossary, tables, figures, boxes, and illustrations. It will be an indispensible resource book for undergraduate students and teachers of economic history.

Genres: History, India, Economics, Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2001

Reviews

[Rohith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biggest value 'Economic History of India, 1857 to 2010' by Tirthankar Roy adds is to situate Indian economic history in the context of scholarship on global economic history. Economic historians are primarily interested in two puzzles:

1. Why is the world unequal two centuries after the industrial revolution began in Western Europe?
2. There is acute poverty amidst industrialization in South Asia. Is it because of endogenous factors such as culture, institutions, geography, etc. or exogenous factors such as colonial rule and globalization?

Indian economic history is dominated by the Marxist school of thought and its African and South American variants which puts colonialism at the root of all of India's institutional failures in economics and politics. While approaches like 'unequal exchange' or 'dependency theory' have been successful in explaining colonialism's persistent effect on the economy, there has been research in more recent years from the 'scientific paradigm' that allows one to determine what exactly the persistent effect of colonialism is, and what the effect is due to the presence of extractive institutions following transition to post-colonial governments. Roy presents India's development path under British colonialism and its immediate aftermath beyond colonialism. In the fourth edition published in 2020, he updates it till the year 2010. Of course, this is a textbook for undergraduate students. So it consists of sweeping narratives that are presented with excellent footnotes and boxes describing case studies. I highly recommend going through them.

What does this approach offer which the Marxist analysis doesn't? One, it problematizes India's experience of indentured labour export to the South Pacific and Caribbean as something more than slavery. Roy argues that this movement of labour was not just forced, but there was a sizeable transfer which was voluntary as famines were ravaging the Indian subcontinent. For many, this offered itself as an avenue to escape death due to hunger. Another case in point are famines. The most popular explanation for famines in the late 1800s till the 1943 Bengal famine was that of British misadministration put forward by the Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen. In this analysis, Roy shows how mortality rates should have fallen once the British left if famines were only because of poor British administration. So he presents the under-documented cases of improvement in private grain trade in the subcontinent during this time which was possible due to the dense network of railways set up by the British. Thirdly, it also present fantastic summaries of newer research which looks at regional differences in the persistent effects of colonialism. Say, Laxmi Iyer's work on how land tenure differences between areas under direct British rule and those under indirect British rule have had different effects on poverty and inequality.

This is quite possibly one of the best books on Indian economic history and I look forward to reading Roy's non-fiction work on private entrepreneurship and business in India.

[Sandipan Majumder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely not an easy read but the fact prof Roy doesn't affiliate his writings to either left or right ideology makes it a very interesting one.

[Dennis Fischman]

I am not the audience for this book. I needed more background and summary, more signaling when the author was considering alternative explanations from one sentence to the next, and perhaps less detail.

[Yawar Hussain]

yawar hussain bhat

[Nishkarsh Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides comprehensive understanding of Indian economy under raj and challenges associated to it. Roy has tried to substantiate causations across the book with relevant facts and logical arguments.

This book may provoke a reader to rethink the nationalist movement in India through a whole new perspective and help understand the role of Colonialism in building India.

Book is smooth for readers in economics.

[Ariket Dutta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nicely divided in sections and all the sections are crispy with analytical data. Chapters starts with generic questions which author gives hypothetical answers if no concrete data available.
Its written without any bias and analogy with current times is also given for few issues.

A Goodread

[!Tæmbuŝu]

Reviewed by Economic History

[Mg Thamizhvalavan]

This is another great book on the indian history on its economy. Traces historical background for every aspect of india economy.

[Sandeep Singh]

.good

[Abk · Rating 2 out of 5]

मैंने पढ़ी किताब,अच्छी थी और किताब को कई सेक्शन में बांटकर बहुत बेहतरीन तरीके से लिखा है लेकिन किताब के हेडिंग के बारे में जो एसेज लिखे गए है बिल्कुल तुच्छ , नीरस, बोगस,है।

[Premanandh]

i need the soft copy of this book