This collection of essays is, as the editors have claimed, “a handy textbook on the Economic History of colonial India” (1). Since most of the existing textbooks on the subject are now dated, this was much needed. This collection, which has essays by the influential historians and economists who have re-shaped economic history in the last two decades, appears to have been drawn upon the model of The Cambridge Economic History of India (Vol. II, 1983). But as I have explained below, the editors are only partially successful to convert this collection into a textbook.
There are fourteen chapters, most of which are authored or co-authored by the editors. They are in three broad categories. The first set relies either on global history or trans-national comparative history approach. In the first essay, for instance, Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, building on their well-known work, have drawn upon a comparative study of India and the UK. They argue that “the great divergence” took place around 1595. From that period onwards, the West gradually gained prosperity and India, poverty. The empirical evidence for this argument comes from a comparison of the grain-wages of India and the UK, which were declining in India and rising in the UK. Similarly, 1600 onwards, GDP per capita in India was declining whereas it was rising for the UK. Latika Chaudhary’s essay is also a comparative study. In her essay on “school education” has raised new questions, Chaudhary provides an international comparison, which reveals that the rate of enrolment in primary schools in India was lower than other colonies and western countries. She provides various explanations for this development. She argues that “caste” played an important role, whereby the upper castes tried to bar lower castes from school education. In his essay on “colonial India and the world economy”, Gopalan Balachandran has relied on global history approach. He suggests that we need to shift the focus of current research from India-UK centred approach to the one which considers India’s multilateral trade relations and contacts with other regions. Susan Wolcott’s study is also a comparative study. In her essay on labour productivity in modern industry in the late colonial period she argues that the labour was costlier and less productive as compared to other industrialised economies. It may explain why Indian businesses were unable to compete with those in other countries.
The second set of essays are brief surveys of the existing literature on the conventional themes, though the reader will also find several new insights. For instance, the editors have jointly authored an essay on “agriculture”, which is a broad survey. They argue that agriculture remained stagnant during the colonial rule, “the fundamental proximate cause of underdevelopment in India” (106). On “industry” Bishnupriya Gupta’s essay offers an exhaustive overview of the existing literature. She has also offered a new explanation for the pattern of industrialisation in colonial India. Gupta argues “information flows” were crucial factors in shaping the Indian investment in industries. The Indian capitalists invested in the sectors of which they possessed the requisite information.
“Deindustrialisation” is another common theme. Indrajit Ray in his essay on deindustrialisation provides a critical discussion of the existing literature, and he disagrees that deindustrialization had set in with the onset of the colonial rule in Bengal in 1757. On the contrary, he argues Bengal underwent industrialisation during the period 1757-1829 but witnessed deindustrialisation after that. Dan Bogart and Latika Chaudhary have presented a broad survey of the development of railways in India. One of their arguments is that railways “increased market integration and national income” (158). Tirthankar Roy’s essay on labour history questions the two existing dominant paradigms which have dominated the subject, and suggests that both the paradigms—Marxist and the post-colonial school—are inadequate to explain several questions about labour history. He has proposed “a rational choice approach”, which he believes is better suited to answer several questions. In a similar vein, Santhi Hejeebu tells us—in a narrative style—history of the rise and growth of the East India Company. Unfortunately, her essay has hardly any new insight to offer.
New institutional economics and economic theory motivate the third and final set of essays. Lakshmi Iyer, in her chapter on “colonial institutions”, while explaining the regional economic disparities in contemporary India, argues that the nature of institutions introduced in the colonial period determined the outcome in the post-colonial period. For instance, she shows that the areas which were under landlord based systems (zamindari system) performed poorly in post-colonial India as compared to the areas which were under individual cultivator-based systems (raiyatwari). Anand V. Swamy’s focus is on contract enforcement, which he argues played a crucial role in the colonial economy. He shows that where the colonial state could successfully enforce contracts with peasants, like in opium cultivation, it brought prosperity to both the parties. Where it failed to do so, like indigo cultivation in Bengal, it turned into a disaster. The last essay, by Prashant Bharadwaj and Kevin Quirolo, studies how migration can shape the economy of a region. In their study of the partition migration, they have come up with interesting findings. For instance, one finding is “the partition resulted in [a] greater concentration of literate migrants in urban areas of Pakistan” (234).
The editors have tried hard to convert this collection into a textbook; for instance, they have introduced text-boxes to explain concepts, provided a chapter-wise and up-to-date bibliography, and kept essays brief in length. But to call it a textbook will be misleading. To understand each essay/chapter a vast amount of prior knowledge is needed and the work lacks coherence. It seems that to turn this collection into a textbook was an afterthought. Even then, the reader will benefit immensely from these essays, many of which carry keen insights. This work will be a handy resource for teachers and researchers.
