Deindustrialisation and the Drain Theory: The Contours of Economic Degradation in British India

Animesh Gadre ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Given the lively debate on the consequences of British colonialism on the Indian economy in the realms of contemporary politics and academia, this paper attempts to trace the development of the economic history of India since the 18th century with a distinct focus on the drain theory of wealth and the question of deindustrialisation. It examines a diverse set of academic publications on this subject and compares the evidence shown by a wide range of authors to arrive at possible conclusions. It is found that the composition of the drain theory of wealth was critically questioned by scholars both home and abroad, and its set of core suppo- sitions remain unsubstantiated. On the other hand, the evidence for the deindustrialisation hypothesis is found to be significant, at least for the regions of Gangetic Bihar and Bengal, during the early 19th century.

Keywords: drain; deindustrialisation; colonialism; economic degradation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N95 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-07-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/108977/1/MPRA_paper_108977.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:108977

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().