USA, March 1, 2007: HPI Note: We came across this fascinating essay on the history of India with regard to world trade. It is on an educational website called AskAsia. Following are some excerpts from this one resource on the site:
“Consumers in most major cities of the world can buy Indian jewelry and clothing. This statement is true today, but it would also have been true four thousand years ago. Goods, ideas, and religious concepts “made in India” have been exported to markets around the world since the people of the subcontinent built their first cities in the Indus Valley in the third millennium B.C.E.”
….
“The enormous manufacturing and trade balance advantages that India had enjoyed for some 2,500 years were slowly wiped out as a result of British colonial control of the subcontinent. In 1750, with the start of significant British presence in the north, India at the end of Mughal power was still producing about one-fourth of the world’s manufactured goods. It was not until the nineteenth century that British manufacturers could cheaply produce cotton cloth that equaled Indian quality. By using Indian-grown cotton to make cloth by machine at home, they finally ended India’s superiority. With increasing political control, the British were even able to force Indian consumers to buy inferior British fabrics.”
….
“By 1850, with the establishment of British control over political and economic life, India’s share of world manufacturing had sunk to a mere 8.6 percent of world production. At the time of India’s independence from England, India was producing only 1.5 percent of world manufactures. Clearly colonialism had “underdeveloped” India as an economic giant.”
….
“Examples abound of India’s presence in the world. In the modern age, India has offered Gandhian nonviolence as an alternative to the violence that has killed 140 million people in the last century, nearly 120 million of them slaughtered by their own governments. Indian clothing styles can be bought in many stores. Indian writers have won major prizes at home as well as in England and the U.S.–the Booker and Pulitzer prizes for literature have recently been awarded to Indian authors. Indian filmmakers are among the world’s leaders and Indian art and cuisine are highly visible in the major cities of the world. A large number of Indians now living in Europe, other parts of Asia, and the United States are contributing to major scientific, medical, and technological knowledge and are serving as active citizens as well.”