Colonial Deindustrialisation of India

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Brijesh K. Mishra ◽  
Siddhartha Rastogi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impact ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British East India Company

While it is quite well accepted that the British rule imposed a heavy cost on India in terms of financial and industrial losses, the economic impact of the Company rule is still far from settled. Rule of the British East India Company (BEIC), and later the crown, has the scholars divided on whether the colonial India suffered a systematic draw down of its economic resources—the so-called drain theory. While the British version underplays or denies such a drain, the nationalists suggest it was a major long-term damage. This article reviews and critiques the economic policies of the British Raj in detail to know whether there was at all a drain of resources out of India and, if yes, to what extent. It was found that while the nationalists exaggerated effects of the drain, their arguments hold significant value. Finally, drain theory is assessed in the backdrop of the theory of unequal exchange.

INDIA-U.K. Trade: A phenomenon of sliding scenario

2012 ◽  
Vol 01 (09) ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
S M Shafi
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Community ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Mutual Trust ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Market Opportunities ◽  
The Relationship

Until 1973 when U.K., was not the member of European Community (now European Union , India’s trade was not geographically as diversified. This was purely due to the reason that India’s Trade was almost exclusively with U.K. Indian merchandise would find other destinations in the European continent only as re-exports from Britishers. India’s trade relations with U.K., are based upon long nourished relationship fostered during British rule in India with British East India Company as its promotor plateform. Based upon mutual trust between the trading communities of the two countries and facilitated with market opportunities, the relationship got further stronger even after India’s independence from Britain. However, with U.K. joining European Union, India’s trade started getting diversified and trade volumes with U.K started showing falling trends. The present paper traces out the behaviour of falling trade scenario with U.K.

The lepers, lunatics, the lame, the blind, the infirm and the making of asylums and benevolent charities: the Indian merchant class and disability in colonial India

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjukta Choudhury Kaul ◽  
Manjit Singh Sandhu ◽  
Quamrul Alam
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Institutional Pressures ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Business People ◽  
British Raj ◽  
The Social ◽  
Merchant Class ◽  
Business Response

Purpose This study aims to explore the role of the Indian merchant class in 19th-century colonial India in addressing the social concerns of disability. Specifically, it addresses why and how business engaged with disability in colonial India. Design/methodology/approach This study’s methodology entailed historiographical approach and archival investigation of official correspondence and letters of business people in 19th-century colonial India. Findings Using institutional theory, the study’s findings indicate that guided by philanthropic and ethical motives, Indian businesses, while recognizing the normative and cognitive challenges, accepted the regulative institutional pressures of colonial India and adopted an involved and humane approach. This manifested in the construction of asylums and the setting up of bequeaths and charitable funds for people with disability (PwD). The principal institutional drivers in making of the asylums and the creation of benevolent charities were religion, social practices, caste-based expectations, exposure to Western education and Victorian and Protestantism ideologies, the emergence of colonial notions of health, hygiene and medicine, carefully crafted socio-political and economic policies of the British Raj and the social aspirations of the native merchant class. Originality/value In contrast to the 20th-century rights-based movement of the West, which gave birth to the global term of “disability,” a collective representation of different types of disabilities, this paper locates that cloaked in individual forms of sickness, the identity of PwD in 19th-century colonial India appeared under varied fragmented labels such as those of leper, lunatic, blind and infirm. This paper broadens the understanding of how philanthropic business response to disability provided social acceptability and credibility to business people as benevolent members of society. While parallelly, for PwD, it reinforced social marginalization and the need for institutionalization, propagating perceptions of unfortunate and helpless members of society.

Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons:

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Rai Waits
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Built Form ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New System

Prison construction was among the most important infrastructural changes brought about by British rule in nineteenth-century India. Informed by the extension of liberal political philosophy into the colony, the development of the British colonial prison introduced India to a radically new system of punishment based on long-term incarceration. Unlike prisons in Europe and the United States, where moral reform was cited as the primary objective of incarceration, prisons in colonial India focused on confinement as a way of separating and classifying criminal types in order to stabilize colonial categories of difference. In Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons: British Jails in Bengal, 1823–73, Mira Rai Waits explores nineteenth-century colonial jail plans from India's Bengal Presidency. Although colonial reformers eventually arrived at a model of prison architecture that resembled Euro-American precedents, the built form and functional arrangements of these places reflected a singularly colonial model of operation.

scholarly journals Editorial; Colonial India

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Ramesh Mehta ◽  
Buddhdev Pandya ◽  
Soumit Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Colonial Legacy

The colonial legacy of health care under the European powers in India especially the East India Company and the British Raj

scholarly journals Muslims preaching movements in British-India: An appraisal of the Tablighi Jamaat and its competitors

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 356-371
Author(s):  
Kausar Ali ◽  
Huang Minxing
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
British India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Islamic Schools ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The World

The article examines emergence of the Tablighi Jamaat (henceforth TJ) in colonial India. It discusses the emergence of Tablighi Jamaat in light of the proselytizing (Tablighi) competition among various Islamic schools that emerged soon after the failure of the 1857 war. This article answers the question of why Maulana Ilyas founded the TJ in undivided India? This study aims to understand the emergence of the TJ in light of the deprivation and Maududian theory of Islamic revivalism. The discussion is based on qualitative analysis of the existing secondary sources in the form of books, research articles, and reports, etc. This study finds that TJ was founded because several Tablighi Jamaats belonged to different Islamic sects during British rule, responded to the challenges of the Muslim community. The Deobandi, Barailvi, Ahl-i-Hadith, and Shi’a Muslims established their proselytizing societies. This study concludes that the Deobandi Tablighi Jamaat emerged not only in response to the anti-Islamic campaigns of Hindus and Christians. The TJ was also founded in response to the preaching struggles of other Islamic schools in the British Raj. It is recommended that the TJ works to implement the Deobandi version of Islam in the world should be further studied

Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill's Defense of British Rule in India

2006 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 586-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Tunick
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
The West ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British East India Company

Some critics of John Stuart Mill understand him to advocate the forced assimilation of people he regards as uncivilized and to defend toleration and the principle of liberty only for civilized people of the West. Examination of Mill's social and political writings and practice while serving the British East India Company shows, instead, that Mill is a tolerant imperialist: Mill defends interference in India to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting viewpoints, and a commercial society that can cope with natural threats. He does not think the principle of liberty is waived for the uncivilized or that the West should forcibly reshape them in its own monistic image. Mill's tolerant imperialism reflects a tension between liberty and moral development that also surfaces when Mill thinks about the scope of government in civilized societies.

scholarly journals Empires of Opportunity: German naturalists in British India and the frictions of transnational science

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
MORITZ VON BRESCIUS
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East India Company ◽  
German Unification ◽  
British India ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Rich Picture ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Professional Mobility

Abstract This article examines the little-known but exceptionally well-documented German Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition to India and Central Asia in 1854–58, under the auspices of the British East India Company and the king of Prussia. The brothers’ careers present an instructive study of the opportunities and conflicts inherent within transnational science and the imperial labour market in colonial India in the course of the nineteenth century. Until now, historians have largely emphasized the ways in which European East India companies provided scientific practitioners with professional mobility from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. In these accounts, German scientific practitioners are represented as especially mobile, moving more or less freely within foreign empires, because at the time no ‘German’ empire existed that might compete for allegiances and make them appear suspect. My article, in contrast, offers a revisionist account of this globalizing picture in two senses. First, a close look at the local everyday practices of the Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition highlights the considerable tensions and frictions that accompanied imperial recruitment to South Asia—even for German scientific practitioners. What emerges instead is a rich picture of the contradictory interpretations of supposedly cooperative projects among contemporaries, and the instrumentalization of scientific activities for political ends in the Indian subcontinent, for both established and aspiring colonial powers. Second, the ways in which the Schlagintweits’ scientific expedition was represented and remembered in subsequent decades shows how the politics around transnational science projects only intensified with German unification.

Legal Pluralism in Historical Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-54
Author(s):  
Brian Z. Tamanaha
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
East India Company ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Personal Law ◽  
Territorial States

This chapter presents a historical context of legal pluralism. A pivotal shift of the past several centuries has been from law attached to a person's community toward territorial states that claim a monopoly over law—a long-term project that has always been marked by major exceptions and has never been fully completed. Prior to this shift, the widely held view, now largely forgotten, is that everyone was entitled to be judged by the law of their community, called “personal law” at the time because it attaches to each person, though the chapter descriptively labels this “community law” to enable comparisons to other contexts. The first step is to understand empires, which are cauldrons of legal pluralism, using the Roman Empire as an example. The chapter then covers legal pluralism during the High Middle Ages, followed by the slow process by which the state gradually crystallized, absorbing other forms of law within its ambit, though not entirely. It also addresses three legally plural contexts in the early modern period into the twentieth century: the millet system in the Ottoman Empire, extraterritoriality, and the plural legal system entrenched in India by the British East India Company.

scholarly journals Poor Man's Crop: Evading opium monopoly

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 633-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUNNEL CEDERLÖF
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Severe Flood ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
North Bengal

AbstractResearch on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company, respectively. The historical trajectory has tended to emphasize the implementation of a draconian and all-encompassing British monopoly. This study joins the emerging efforts to search the regional histories on the margins of the strongest players’ actions on the global scene. It aims at nuancing the narratives by focusing on a region away from such centres. The study investigates the local cultivation and usage of opium in Rangpore district—a region in north Bengal that had recently been badly affected by a severe flood. Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative trade with neighbouring states gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. The fact that production and trade were small-scale, fragmented, and made use of markets in Cooch Bihar, Assam, and Bhutan impeded British attempts at getting in control of production and trade.

The British Raj and the Road to Independence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Kamdar
Keyword(s):  
East India Company ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
British Raj ◽  
The Road ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
Royal Charter

What was the East India Company? On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter giving a group of English adventurers a fifteen-year monopoly over England’s trade with Asia. The first incarnation of the British East India Company was born. The British were...

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