Bishnupriya Gupta’s An Economic History of India is a well-written, concise, and rigorously argued contribution to the field of economic history. Gupta uses empirical evidence to understand the impact of British rule on the economy. She takes a long view to understand the changes in pre-colonial India and “puts a timeline on what has come to be known as the Great Divergence between Europe and Asia” (p. 3). “By taking a long view, the book explores persistent effects of historical institutions as well as policy-driven changes after independence in 1947” (p. 3). The book covers the span of history from Emperor Akbar’s reign to the British East India Company, British Crown rule, and Nehru’s independent India. The book’s focus ends around 2000. Innovatively, Gupta rethinks the narrative of industrial decline and underdevelopment. She argues that India’s economic stagnation was not primarily due to industrial backwardness but rather to the stagnation of agriculture—the dominant sector of the economy (pp. 10–11). This reframing offers fresh insights into the structural constraints that shaped India’s growth trajectory.

I appreciated the book’s thematic structure. Chapter 1 provides “a long view of the living standards and economic growth” from the Mughal Empire to independent India (p. 11). Gupta explores how colonialization impacted these indicators to explain India’s stagnation and increasing divergence from Britain after the seventeenth century. Chapter 2 focuses on India’s largest sector, agriculture. Gupta includes empirical data to show the inequalities across the Indian subcontinent throughout her long period of focus. Her analysis gives clues as to why some regions fared better than others. Chapter 3 explores the industrial sector. Much like Tirthankar Roy, Gupta nuances the narrative around de-industrialization during British rule and adds much-needed complexity to the discussion of how India has industrialized or failed to do so. The chapter cites, like the others, her extensive studies to show that de-industrialization was a much smaller phenomenon than other historians have previously described and that industrialization started in the mid-nineteenth century, although at a slow rate (Gupta also cites other important contributions to this more nuanced narrative around India’s de-industrialization and industrialization).

Chapter 4 discusses the service sector—its origins and where it stands in 2000. Gupta successfully shows that both colonial and independent India’s focus on higher education produced higher labor productivity in services than in industry. Chapter 5 focuses on four different aspects of economic and social inequality: regional, income, caste, and gender. Chapter 6 takes a comparative approach, looking at British colonial policies in India and Japanese colonial policies in Korea and Taiwan.

Gupta’s book builds her arguments gradually, drawing on extensive empirical evidence to explain complex transformations in India’s economy over several centuries. The structure is clear and logical, making it accessible to both specialists and readers new to the subject. For instance, Gupta concludes that “the colonial attempts to create incentives through well-defined property rights resulted in a structure of landholding that minimized incentives for improving the quality of land” (p. 51). Britain’s colonial policies in land produced a fragmentation of land, which produced low incentives to increase output beyond subsistence. Another example arises in Chapter 4, where Gupta unpacks the historical origins of the successful service sector in India. Starting with a discussion on caste and how it produces an unequal structure, where occupations are imposed upon citizens at birth, Gupta shows how caste diversity produced a strong higher education bias. A bias toward higher education and a caste structure meant and means that only certain societal groups (the higher castes) gain access to education. Investment in primary education in India was and is relatively low—the number of Indians enrolled in secondary schools was similar to French numbers, while the number of Indians enrolled in primary school was lower than in Brazil around the turn of the nineteenth century (p. 118). Chapter 5 on inequalities also builds her arguments one step at a time with extensive empirical evidence, exemplifying Gupta’s ability to unpack intricate socio-economic dynamics (see also Gupta’s discussion on land rights on p. 48, and other good examples on pp. 1, 4–5, 13, 35, 53, 58, 75, 119, 141, and 188).

One of the book’s key strengths lies in its comparative perspective. Gupta situates India within a broader Asian context, engaging with other countries that share a colonial past. This approach nuances the debate and challenges persistent myths about India’s supposed failure to generate economic growth and prosperity under colonial rule. Gupta draws several comparisons with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China to explain India’s relative failure in industrializing and its service sector advantage (e.g., pp. 92, 96, 102–103, 105, 113, and 118). Chapter 6 is dedicated entirely to a comparison between India, South Korea, and Taiwan. The comparison with South Korea and Taiwan, emerging from Japanese colonization, points to, argues Gupta, differences in agricultural and educational policies, which can explain the different outcomes. And perhaps the most astonishing figure is how less than 20 percent of land was irrigated in India in 1935, compared to 69 percent in Korea and 78 percent in Taiwan (p. 175).

While Gupta’s work is comprehensive and empirically grounded, a few issues were discussed in too little detail. Firstly, Gupta does not adequately describe what she labels the “Nationalist” critique or historians of India (pp. 36, 59). However, the book is purposefully short, which perhaps makes that discussion dispensable. Secondly, I was left wondering if Gupta really offers a long view, as she brushes over long periods of history in some parts (e.g., p. 131). The earlier periods clearly suffer from historical datasets that are often incomplete or regionally skewed. Although Gupta acknowledges these constraints, readers might benefit from a more explicit discussion of how data gaps influence the robustness of certain conclusions. Finally, Gupta successfully uncovers several path dependencies that explain India’s current economic development (see summary on p. 191). Nevertheless, while the book excels in economic analysis, integrating perspectives from political economy and cultural history could provide a richer understanding of institutional dependencies and social inequalities.

Having engaged with this literature for over a decade, I find Gupta’s synthesis exceptional. The book consolidates a vast body of research into a coherent, succinct, and wellorganized whole. It is an indispensable resource for scholars seeking to understand the complexities of India’s economic history and its global connections.