The Economic Situation Of British India Before And During The War

First published in 1952, imperialism is a regularly recurring historical phenomenon, calling for neither approval not condemnation in the abstract. A more profitable exercise is to consider particular imperialisms and assess their spirit and their achievements. From this premise Sir Percival Griffiths proceeds to examine the political, administrative and economic effects on India of British rule. Formerly a member of the Indian Civil Service, later the leader of the British representatives in the Indian Legislative Assembly and now closely connected with commerce and industry in India and Pakistan, he has the advantage of a three-sided approach. He was, moreover, playing an active part in Indian public affairs throughout the years leading to the transfer of power. In 1942 he declared that he would fight any government which resiled from the promise of independence for India and when the Cabinet Mission visited India in 1947, it fell on him to assert - on behalf of the British community in India – their conviction that independence must be granted without further delay. It is because he has thus been a close eye-witness of the events of the last three decades in India that he has written this book. Although Western civilization is often regarded by Indians as materialistic, it is the spiritual rather than in the material sphere that British influence has been greatest. It has built up Indian nationalism; it has engendered in Indian minds a new concept of equality and of human rights; it has rekindled the scientific spirit; and is has profoundly modified the Indian intellectual approach to the problems in life. In all this there have been losses as well as gain – not least among the losses being the partial destruction of village corporate life and the spread of specticism among the intelligentsia – but there can be little doubt which way the balance lies. A further fifty years may have to elapse, Sir Percival suggests, before a final assessment of the impact of the British is possible. In the meantime the present book may be confidently recommended as the most authoritative and objective examination of the history and influence of British administration in Indian, which has yet appeared; a book, furthermore, that may be expected to achieve the status of a standard work.

Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law -was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

This Palgrave Pivot revisits the topic of how British colonialism moulded work and life in India and what kind of legacy it left behind. Did British rule lead to India’s impoverishment, economic disruption and famine? Under British rule, evidence suggests there were beneficial improvements, with an eventual rise in life expectancy and an increase in wealth for some sectors of the population and economy, notably for much business and industry. Yet many poor people suffered badly, with agricultural stagnation and an underfunded government who were too small to effect general improvements. In this book Roy explains the paradoxical combination of wealth and poverty, looking at both sides of nineteenth century capitalism. Between 1850 and 1930, India was engaged in a globalization process not unlike the one it has seen since the 1990s. The difference between these two times is that much of the region was under British colonial rule during the first episode, while it was an independent nation state during the second. Roy's narrative has a contemporary relevance for emerging economies, where again globalization has unleashed extraordinary levels of capitalistic energy while leaving many livelihoods poor, stagnant, and discontented.

A New Economic History of Colonial India provides a new perspective on Indian economic history. Using economic theory and quantitative methods, it shows how the discipline is being redefined and how new scholarship on India is beginning to embrace and make use of concepts from the larger field of global economic history and economics. The book discusses the impact of property rights, the standard of living, the labour market and the aftermath of the Partition. It also addresses how education and work changed, and provides a rethinking of traditional topics including de-industrialization, industrialization, railways, balance of payments, and the East India Company. Written in an accessible way, the contributors – all leading experts in their fields – firmly place Indian history in the context of world history. An up-to-date critical survey and novel resource on Indian Economic History, this book will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Economic History, Indian and South Asian Studies, Economics and Comparative and Global History.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

"First published in Great Britain in 2015 as The Raj at War by The Bodley Head"--Title page verso.

How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the indigenous collaborators needed to subsequently uphold imperial rule. The English East India Company later adapted the same 'define and conquer' and 'define and rule' strategies to carve out the West's biggest colonial empire in Asia. Refuting existing accounts of the 'rise of the West', this book foregrounds the profoundly imitative rather than innovative character of Western colonialism to advance a new explanation of how universal empires arise and endure.