British East India Company rule (1764–1857) over 250 million acres
(1,000,000 km2), or 35 percent of Indian domain. Indirect rule was
established on buffer states.
Ray
(2009) explains when did the industry begin to decay, what was the extent of
its decay during the early 19th century, and why it happened. Ray uses the industry's market performance
and its consumption of raw materials and emphasizes that the decline actually
started in the mid-1820 s and reached a crisis by 1860, when 563,000 workers
lost their jobs. ‘The industry shrank by about 28% by 1850 and just survived as
British policies depressed the industry's exports, but suggests its decay is
better explained by technological innovations in Britain.’
“Many
historians point to colonization as a major factor in both India's deindustrialization and Britain's Industrial
Revolution.[55][56][57][77]
The
capital amassed from Bengal following its 1757 conquest supported investment in
British industries such as textile manufacture during the Industrial
Revolution as
well as increasing British wealth, while contributing to deindustrialization
and famines in Bengal;[55][56][57][54] following the British conquest, a
devastating famine
broke out in Bengal in the early 1770s, killing a third of the Bengali population and 5
percent of the national population.[78] Colonization forced the large Indian market
to open to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties, compared to heavily taxed local Indian
producers. In Britain protectionist policies such as high tariffs
restricted Indian textile sales. By contrast, raw cotton was imported without
tariffs to British factories which manufactured textiles and sold them back to
India. British economic policies gave them a monopoly over India's large market
and cotton resources.[79][66][80] India served as both a significant supplier
of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods.[81]”
Bengal
was still a major exporter of cotton cloth to the Americas and the Indian Ocean in 1811, However, Bengali exports declined
over the course of the early 19th century, as British imports to Bengal
increased, from 25% in 1811 to 93% in 1840.[82]
Stephen Broadberry and
Bishnupriya Gupta gave the following comparative estimates for Indian and UK
populations and GDP per capita during 1600–1871 in terms of 1990 international
dollars.[25][84][85]
Year |
India
($) |
UK
($) |
Ratio
(%) |
India
population (m) |
UK
population (m) |
1600 |
782 |
1,104 |
72 |
142 |
5 |
1650 |
736 |
904 |
83 |
142 |
5.8 |
1700 |
719 |
1,477 |
49.3 |
164 |
8.8 |
1751 |
661 |
1,678 |
39.9 |
190 |
9.2 |
1801 |
639 |
2,142 |
32.6 |
207 |
16.3 |
1811 |
609 |
2,093 |
29.6 |
215 |
18.5 |
1821 |
580 |
2,090 |
28.2 |
205 |
21.0 |
1831 |
585 |
2,176 |
26.6 |
216 |
24.1 |
1841 |
584 |
2,380 |
24.6 |
212 |
26.9 |
1851 |
586 |
2,721 |
21.9 |
232 |
27.5 |
1861 |
554 |
3,065 |
18.0 |
244 |
29.1 |
1871 |
526 |
3,629 |
14.5 |
256 |
31.6 |
However, Parthasarathi criticised
the per-capita GDP estimates from Broadberry and Gupta.[27][4] Workers in the textile industry, for
example, earned more in Bengal and Mysore than they did in Britain, while
agricultural labour in Britain had to work longer hours to earn the same amount
as in Mysore.[5] Others such as Andre
Gunder Frank,
Robert A. Denemark, Kenneth Pomeranz and Amiya
Kumar Bagchi also
criticised estimates that showed low per-capita income and GDP growth rates in
Asia (especially China and India) prior to the 19th century, pointing to later
research that found significantly higher per-capita income and growth rates in
China and India during that period.[86]
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