Inequality in colonial India

Tirthankar Roy

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: A view popular in Indian economic history scholarship claims that the institutional and commercial policy of British India made the rich Indians richer and the poor poorer during colonial rule. The paper shows that the evidence to support the conjecture is weak. Missing data on peasant income makes it hard to generalize on aggregate trends in inequality. But the evidence does question the role of state policy behind trends in inequality. An alternative account starts from the distinction between land-dependent and trade-dependent occupations. The open economy of the nineteenth century affected these two spheres differently. Low and stagnant land-productivity limited the average return that accrued to land-dependent occupations. Occupations directly or indirectly dependent on trading could escape the constraint partially.

Keywords: colonialism; inequality; British Empire; South Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N15 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2018-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-his
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:wpaper:90409

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