Conclusions

Abstract

WITHIN our sectoral review, can we decipher any common historical trends in the Indian economy’s evolution? One might argue that conditions for development were at their most favourable over the second half of the nineteenth century. Foreign capital was attracted into the country, large-scale public works, notably railways, were constructed, and agriculture was able to diversify and respond to international demand without, almost certainly, producing any aggregate deterioration in per capita production of foodgrains. Particularly during the 1860s — when the American Civil War cotton boom coincided with an expansion in public works construction — and again during the run of good harvests between 1880 and 1895 the economy may have been advancing on a wide front. Again, despite the virulence of late nineteenth-century debates, any expropriatory dimension of British rule may now have been moderated. Modern measurement of the then existing ‘drain’ as comparatively small confirms the view that the fundamental impact of imperial rule on the indigenous economy must have come in the field of revenue raising. Here the ’burden’ of imperialism was after 1850 almost certainly less than in the first third of the nineteenth century, when the pumping out of land revenue may have markedly depressed the agricultural economy.