"India was a major player in the world export market for textiles in the early 18th century, but by the middle of the 19th century it had lost all of its export market and much of its domestic market. Other local industries also suffered some decline, and India underwent secular de-industrialization as a consequence. While India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure fell to only 2 percent by 1900. We use an open, specific-factor model to organize our thinking about the relative role played by domestic and foreign forces in India's de-industrialization. The construction of new relative price evidence is central to our analysis. We document trends in the ratio of export to import prices (the external terms of trade) from 1800 to 1913, and that of tradable to non-tradable goods and own-wages in the tradable sectors going back to 1765. With this new relative price evidence in hand, we ask how much of the de-industrialization was due to local supply-side influences (such as the demise of the Mughal empire) and how much to world price shocks (such as world market integration and rapid productivity advance in European manufacturing), both of which had to deal with an offset the huge net transfer from India to Britain before 1815. Whether the Indian de-industrialization shocks and responses were big or small is then assessed by comparisons with other parts of the periphery"--NBER website

Originally published in 1917. Author: Balkrishna, M.A. Language: English Keywords: Social Sciences / Economic History Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The majority of workers in South Asia are employed in industries that rely on manual labour and craft skills. Some of these industries have existed for centuries and survived great changes in consumption and technology over the last 150 years. In earlier studies, historians of the region focused on mechanized rather than craft industries, arguing that traditional manufacturing was destroyed or devitalized during the colonial period, and that modern industry is substantially different. Exploring new material from research into five traditional industries, Tirthankar Roy s book contests these notions, demonstrating that while traditional industry did evolve during the Industrial Revolution, these transformations had a positive rather than destructive effect on manufacturing generally. In fact, the book suggests, the major industries in post-independence India were shaped by such transformations. Tirthankar Roy s book offers new and penetrating insights into India s economic and social history.

As author of the hugely influential The Economic History of India 1857-1947, Tirthankar Roy has established himself as the leading contemporary economic historian of India. Here, Roy turns his attention to labour and livelihood and the nature of economic change in the Subcontinent. This book covers: economic history of modern India rural labour labour-intensive industrialization women and industrialization. Challenging the prevailing wisdom on Indian economic growth - that it is bound up with Marxian, postcolonial class analysis - Roy formulates a new view. Commercialization, surplus labour and uncertainty are seen as equally important and the end result reconciles the increasingly opposed view of economists and historians.

The importance of industrialization as a means of achieving rapid growth and prosperity has long been recognized in the thinking on development strategy for India; but the country's industrial potential has been far from fully exploited.