[jhgb]

It's fascinating how one can read claims such as "Mauryan and the Mughal empires bringing immense prosperity to the region" with no substantiation here and then read a scholarly work on the topic of history of world's economy that in connection with India talks about "wasteful use of resources and negligible levels of productive investment" or "little motive to improve landed property" or "[raising] so much in tax revenue ... [because] the rural population [was] very docile" or "long term stagnation and negligible levels of productive investment" or "no agricultural handbooks or governmental attempts to bolster agricultural productivity" or "crop yields ... stagnant over the long run" or ...

[pm90]

Absolutely, completely bullshit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313608 for a very detailed rebuttal.

[jhgb]

"Bullshit?" Do you offer a better overview material for world's economic history? Your "very detailed rebuttal" appears neither particularly detailed nor does it touch my response to the particular claim of "pre-British Indian empires bringing immense prosperity to the region" which (not the claim, the response to it) you can find for yourself in Maddison.

But now that you mention it, in your "very detailed rebuttal", you find claims about destroying infrastructure. Setting aside the counterintuitive nature of even an exploitative regime destroying productive capital (to rob itself of profits?), Maddison outright claims that the colonial government increased irrigated area in India by a factor of eight. I'm not sure what else counts as infrastructure in a predominantly agricultural society but irrigation infrastructure has to rank pretty high on the list. So that sole claim of destruction can't possibly be the whole truth.

I'd rather prefer a more reasonable response that your visceral knee-jerk reaction. "Absolutely, completely bullshit" is hardly a valuable feedback. I'm going to stick with Maddison for now until he gets surpassed.

[pm90]

The view that you expound upon involve hardly any original thinking, just repeating things you heard somewhere. If you want a detailed rebuttal, provide sources and links, as the commenter I linked to has.

But I will humor your delusion. The colonial govt. did increase area under irrigation: to force farmers to grow cotton and Indigo, bought from them at exploitative prices, shipped to England and then exported back to India. Does Maddison talk about that?

> predominantly agricultural society

Again, bullshit. Yes, agriculture was an important sector, but it was so in every economy at that time. In addition, there was a substantial middle class of weavers, craftsmen,a rtisans etc. which made the Bengal region alone responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP.

Along with the textile weavers, there were also sophisticated financial system. In fact, Omichund financed Clive's expedition against the Nawab of Bengal.

All these systems, destroyed, ruined by Colonial policies.

[jhgb]

"The view that you expound upon involve hardly any original thinking, just repeating things you heard somewhere. If you want a detailed rebuttal, provide sources and links, as the commenter I linked to has."

That sounds awfully like "don't repeat things you heard elsewhere, show things you heard elsewhere instead"! I'm sourcing from Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD, FYI. It hooked me to the notion of quantitatively studying pre-modern economies.

"The colonial govt. did increase area under irrigation: to force farmers to grow cotton and Indigo, bought from them at exploitative prices, shipped to England and then exported back to India. Does Maddison talk about that?"

Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.

"All these systems, destroyed, ruined by Colonial policies."

Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.

"Yes, agriculture was an important sector, but it was so in every economy at that time. In addition, there was a substantial middle class of weavers, craftsmen,a rtisans etc. which made the Bengal region alone responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP."

In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.

[pm90]

You are showing incredibly obvious signs of not being interested in an honest debate but in a dick swinging contest. So I will not be engaging in any more comment. But I will address what you have said in the previous one.

> Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.

Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity. Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc.

> Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.

Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest.

> In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.

What is your fucking point? Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity.

Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were it not for certain very narrow instances of extremely good timing, the subcontinent would have had a very different history, and likely a much better one.

[0]: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft067n9...

[jhgb]

"You are showing incredibly obvious signs of not being interested in an honest debate ..."

And you inferred that from...?

"Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity."

I don't get it. Disagree with what statement that "defines an apologist of colonialism"? With the statement that Madison enumerates various wrongs, both colonial or non-colonial, or with the statement that I didn't dispute colonial wrongs? You haven't read my book and I haven't read yours. I will gladly read yours once I get the chance. Perhaps you could read mine and inform the heirs of Maddison where they went wrong. Especially in regards to claims of Mughal's bad or good administrative practices, which he clearly wasn't quantitatively impressed with - unlike you, apparently

"Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc."

That is a pure speculation that can't be verified in any way. Historians have no way of conducting experiments on populations, nor of predicting the unpredictable outside events. (That is a different issue from me rejecting colonialism for isolationist reasons, though.)

"Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest."

Of course we have. Again, I haven't disputed that and I feel like westerners could have done much better, although I'm not exactly sure that this isn't an anachronistic argument to morals of our own era of the kind that is often shunned by historians (which I admit I am not). Not many leaders had qualms whenever they had power back then. But any of those events are very far from the topic of claims of a shiny Mughal empire preceding it, and by virtue of succeeding it, they're causally incapable of impacting the former.

"What is your fucking point?"

My point was that 25% of world's GDP share for Bengal is a claim hard to reconcile with the documented data of roughly 25% of world's GDP share for the whole of India. One of those claims has to be wrong. Wikipedia asserts Bengal supporting up to one half of India's GDP share at one time and a 12% of world's share, so it would seem that the former rather than the latter is wrong.

"Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity."

That is exactly the thing I answered in my very first response. See "negligible levels of productive investment". See the book for more arguments if you're interested in it. It doesn't specifically focus on any particular place in India though, mentioning summary figures, so it may very well not apply to some local developments. That is a caveat I will happily admit.

"Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were it not for certain very narrow instances of extremely good timing, the subcontinent would have had a very different history, and likely a much better one."

I'm not - and haven't even been - convinced, much less "absolutely firm", that it was more wretched than many other places, but pre-modern life in general isn't to be romanticized. Perhaps India was a little more prosperous, as you say, than the west in the pre-modern period or at least some parts of it. Many variations in time and space existed on top of the general levels of pre-modern subsistence economies that could allow for it, depending of natural conditions, political situation etc. But nobody was that better off before modern machinery. Call me a Marxist all you like but means of production matter and the playing field used to be quite level in this respect.