What positives did Imperialism bring that India couldn't get on its own?

Whoa, not so fast What I am trying to say, while theoretical independent India wasn't necessary candidate for Japanese - style industrialisation, it is enough evidence to say British turned its economy into... Well, colonial economy, and reduced its independence/attempts to create industry surpassing metropolitan one, thus slowly turning it from "1/5 of global population with 1/4 of global wealth' to '1/5 of global population with 1/30 of global wealth'

Railroads were created due to economical necessities of London. Economy was reshaped to economy fitting London. Turning India into Japan was not a target. While other countires were developing industry for their wealth, Britain was developing industry in India for BRITISH wealth. This is very important difference.

So in 1947 we have similar level of life in India as was two centuries earlier (yeah I know about European contributions here, but I think they were compensated with such stuff as, ya know, Great Bengal Famine and fatal British administration during it) but in the meantime the entire world has went far ahead.

Later India suffered on 'post - colonial mentality' problems, as it was thrown in the modern world with little intelectual elite and huge deeply conservative masses of poor people who learnt to distrust government during colonial rule.


Though arguably colonialism still finished much better for India than for Africa I mean, in said very poor India quality of life is few times higher than most of 'rich emerging African economies'.


Personally I have a theory:

the higher level of social development is present in a colonised country, the less suffers it from post - colonial syndromes


Colonised Malaysia went from thalassocratic kingdoms through protectorate to modern world and is 10x richer than Ghana which went from tribal kingdoms through protectorate to modern world, which is 10x richer than Malawi which went from area barely populated by primitive non - urban tribes through protectorate to modern world. Obviously the pattern is not always that clear, but after months of studying statistics I definitely see something here.

Does unity count as a positive? I don't think the subcontinent would have been united as a single country had Europeans not done it.

JEELEN said:

One speaks of empires long before there was any imperialism, so that again makes no sense.

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Your sentence about something making no sense, makes no sense itself.
What I assume you're talking about the Age of Imperialism, which is obviously what the thread is about, but there was definitely imperialism before the Age of Imperialism, discovery before the Age of Discovery and Randy Orton before the Age of Orton. But, your post is kind of just words thrown together, so I'm basically grasping at straws here.

All this, my fair and cultured comrades, points out to the undeniable British Colonial/Imperialistic greed. Seems to me like they simply could never get enough land and resources, always looking for more, no matter how much of these they already had under control/possession. They acted like this not out of basic need but simply to deny other (usually European) powers from (possibly) getting the land/goods or achieving certain expansionistic plans of their own. The world was not enough for the Brits, it seems.

awesome said:

Does unity count as a positive? I don't think the subcontinent would have been united as a single country had Europeans not done it.

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So it's decided: unity and cricket.

Unity and cricket.

Well, not really unity. Just near fanatical nationalism that was forged into a false sense of unity. There are regularly riots between Hindus and Muslims and there are plenty of secession movements. But cricket, at least that is awesome enough to make up for everything.

innonimatu said:

All the industrial powerhouses of the 19th century were much more compact territories. India simply could not meaningfully industrialize in the 19th century.

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Do you think that certain Indian territories conceivably could? I don't think that India as a geopolitical whole/united state was historically pre-determined.

India had the coal and iron necessary for early industrialization, but neither the know-how not the market forces to use them on a large scale. The conditions for that to happen were eventually created by the colonization of the continent.

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You can say that the foreign contact was helpful, while foreign conquest was not. Of course, the two were quite intertwined in the real world.

The thing is though, that if India had a strong government it could have modernized.

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But wasn't India a patchwork of many petty kingdoms shortly before the British conquest? So it didn't have a strong government (at that time).

Sometimes I think whether modern India would be economically stronger if it was divided into smaller entities or not...

It could work, as post 1947 overly socialistic tendencies in Indian government sustained poverty in the entire subcontinent while this probably wouldn't happen on such scale if India was divided on few separate countries

But I am not sure here.

Still, I think the concept of united India and Indian nationality is at least little flawed, given national/cultural/linguistic/religious diversity on the subcontinent.

- 160 millions of Muslims, being actually a majority in states Jammu anf Kashmir and Lakshadweep (Jammu and Kashmir definitely isn't obvious part of India...)
- 20 millions of Sikh in Punjab
- obvious division between Indo - Aryan north and Dravidan south
- internal ethnic divisions inside these two groups (Bihari, Marathi etc)
- Bengalis around the insane borders with Bangladesh
- Assam (eastern India)
- Telangana (west)
- India has 57 different languages with at least 100 000 speakers each (and 29 of them have over 1 000 000 speakers) and around 20 proposed separate countries inside its borders...

Can it be one of the reasons of lack of economic miracle in India compared with China (91% Han ethnic majority)? I don't know.

But wasn't India a patchwork of many petty kingdoms shortly before the British conquest? So it didn't have a strong government (at that time).

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So, maybe a unified India wouldn't have happened, but everyone agrees that besides that, India didn't need British imperialism to become modernized and that British imperialism brought few if any good things.

It is within the realm of possibility that India may actually be a better place with multiple states if not for British imperialism trying to force into a cohesive whole many different cultures.

It isn't like I'm proposing something radically unfeasible, like the Aztecs slaughtering Cortez and his men in one big bloody orgy then disguising themselves in Spanish armor and sailing to Europe, then Montezuma single handedly slaying Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand and the Spanish army in a sneaky surprise attack that only an idiot wouldn't see , and afterwards conquering their way through Europe in a bloody massacre.

Add a hot female, some king of historical mystery and a church conspiracy, and I might have myself a best selling alternative history novel there.

Anyways- an Indian state could have modernized and established a regional hegemony. Bengal looks especially promising considering it has both deposits of coal and oil. And in Mughal India there was already a middle class of merchants, and there were wealthy nobles. This middle class and upper class could have invested in factories, they had the capital, so it isn't unthinkable that certain states could have had their own industrial revolution. As more people gain wealth and become more educated , their desire for greater say would slowly force the princes to adopt liberal ideals into their government. How long would this process take? I don't know, but probably before 1949, the date of Indian independence.

But I think the topic has been exhausted at this point so I rest my case.

But wasn't India a patchwork of many petty kingdoms shortly before the British conquest?

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Territorially and by population, some of these kingdoms were comparable to a typical European state, although, as the phenomena of successful European colonialism testifies, space-filling and even population aren't always good indicators of a state's power or industry.

One of the most interesting things for me is the degree of military supremacy British enjoyed on the continent. There had been some heavier nuts for the British to crack (like Mysore), but in general, British forces dealt decisive defeats to much larger armies of Indian kingdoms.

Some of the British victories resulted from outright bribing the enemy. At the battle of Plassey, Clive made a deal with Mir Jafar to convince him to throw the battle in exchange for kingship.

Krajzen said:

- 160 millions of Muslims, being actually a majority in states Jammu anf Kashmir and Lakshadweep (Jammu and Kashmir definitely isn't obvious part of India...)
- 20 millions of Sikh in Punjab
- obvious division between Indo - Aryan north and Dravidan south
- internal ethnic divisions inside these two groups (Bihari, Marathi etc)
- Bengalis around the insane borders with Bangladesh
- Assam (eastern India)
- Telangana (west)
- India has 57 different languages with at least 100 000 speakers each (and 29 of them have over 1 000 000 speakers) and around 20 proposed separate countries inside its borders...

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Care to explain these points mate ?
How is J&K definitely not Indian ?
How would 20mil Sikh in Punjab, hinder the development ?
What are the divisions in North India and South India that would contribute to the lack of the development ?

and the others ? I especially take offense in the "insane borders" with Bangladesh part. I am very close to the place you have just mentioned. 40Kms away from the border.

Could a society based on caste system become modernized ???

India was already in the process of rudimentary industrializing when the British decided to interfere with that.

Just got this on Reddit : LINK

Domen said:

Could a society based on caste system become modernized ???

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It would certainly bring much more tension to the process, but I can't see why it couldn't in principle. Every "modernized" society started off in a "non-modernized" state, with corresponding cultural hang-ups.

Certainly the caste system was by far the biggest reason for India's lack of modernization, and probably why the Mughal empire as a whole wouldn't have modernized, especially considering the religious backing behind the system, but Indian states with a Muslim majority don't have a religious reason to keep the caste system, and they could have begun the process. As they abolish it and become successful, then the other states would see what was going on and abolish it too, religious reason not withstanding.

Indian Muslims were usually perfectly fine with integrating into the caste system in Hindu-majority areas, which covered, and still cover, the majority of the peninsula.

bonefang said:

How is J&K definitely not Indian ?

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Had Jammu and Kashmir been a British administered area at the time of the partition, J&K definitely would have been given to Pakistan, based on the rather large Muslim majority. This was complicated by the fact that Hari Singh somehow thought he could remain an independent ruler of J&K, but was eventually forced to accede to India in the face of an invasion by tribesmen from Pakistan.

and the others ? I especially take offense in the "insane borders" with Bangladesh part. I am very close to the place you have just mentioned. 40Kms away from the border.

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I think he means this business, which is pretty insane: