Re: India & China were the biggest economies throughout recorded histo
This whole thread really makes no sense.
Off course, India and China would have had the biggest economies prior to the industrial revolution !!
Prior to the industrial revolution....the economy of a country was based purely on its agricultural output.
Even the technology to mine metals or petroluem did not exist, except for some basic things like iron ore, gold.
So isnt it plainly obvious that the countries that had the largest populations also had the biggest economies.
They simply had the most mouths to feed and therefore had to produce the highest agricultural output.
The European countries had populations that were a mere tiny fraction of India and China, so why would they produce 100 times the amount that they consumed, even if they could, since the means to export agricultural produce without spoiling did not exist then.
It was only after the industrial revolution, that the west was able to move ahead much faster because almost all the technology was developed in the West...and off-course they mined the colonies dry too.
I dont see the point......saying that India and China had the biggest economies does not say much.......they also had a population that was a hundred times larger.
BTW: As a corollary to my post above - Today China has just overtaken the US as the largest economy in the world; but again, that really does not say much about the quality of life for the average Chinese vs the average American.
China has 4 times the population of the US. So even if the Chinese economy were double the size of the US economy - it does not mean that the average Chinese will be richer or have a better life than the average American. Plus when you add the pollution mess that is China, corruption, aging population, and the wealth inequality between the rich and the working class......its really is a much more complicate picture.
I suspect the Chinese know all this only too well......that is why you dont see the Chinese making a big deal out of the fact that China has just surpassed the US economy.
Garbage post. You seem to have zero knowledge about anything related to pre-colonial India, there is a reason why it is called the "DeIndustrialization of India", i.e killing off any advanced Industries, and making India a primarily agrarian(that too forcing people to grow Indigo and opium, not food).
India actually had 25% of the worlds
Industrial output, and was the leading exporter of finished textile goods, steel (steel has been exported from the third century) high quality luxury products like Jewelry, Carpets, Lamps, metalware, glassware, dyes and chemicals too were exported. Ship building, cannon factories was actually considered one of the finest. You have to be incredibly stupid to say metal was "primitive" because even upto the late 19th century Indian metal was imported in the west, and studied. The entire process of Zinc was basically copied from the Zarwar process in India.
Indian Ships were banned by the British because they felt their industry at home might collapse because they were uncompetitive, EIC themselves bought ships from India cause they were better and far cheapter than the ones made in Britain.
This is what happened to Industries after the British tookover, and now the west brainwash people like you about India being agrarian
Indian metal works->Banned, only export of Raw materials to britain.
India paper -> banned, only British paper had to be used.
Textiles-> Banned. Only cloth and garments imported from Britain allowed.
Ship building->banned
Jewellery making -> Banned.
Dyes and Chemicals -> Banned.
anyone who did not follow these rules, had their arms chopped off. This is what happened to all the weavers and textile workers in Bengal who opposed.
Apart from just banning this, they also forced people to buy only biritsh goods, the only reason why the revolution happened in Britain was because of India, Cheap raw materials, huuuge money, and a market to sell their stuff. Later they even tried to ban the making of salt. In fact if you go through the bottom link, it says how machines were being developed and used routinely as part of the textile Industry and it was spreading to other areas, to meet rising demand. in short, India was on the verge of an Industrial revolution.
How much were the industries worth?
Just the textile Industry alone:
Voice,Discussion,Debate,Handicrafts,India,SouthAsia,SouthEastAsia,Bangladesh,Bhutan,Maldives,Nepal,Pakistan,Sri Lanka,Crafts,Handlooms,Textiles,Artisans,Craftspersons
In 1600 the British East India Company was granted a Royal Charter for exclusive rights to Britain's trade with India. Textile exports from India, for which the demand in Europe seemed to be insatiable, made up the bulk of its trade. In 1682 the port of Surat on the West coast alone exported 1,436,000 pieces and the total for the whole of India came to more than 3 million pieces – each piece being about 18 yards in length
. The cloth was of different descriptions, most of it cotton of a variety of weaves and weights, dyed, printed and plain, for both garments and drapery. Ship's musters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries speak of thirty to forty different sorts of cotton fabrics, each with a name:bafta, mulmul, mashru, jamdani, moree, percale, nainsukh, chintz., etc, all paid for in bullion: in 4 years alone between 1681 and 1685 the East India Company imported 240 tonnes of silver and 7 tonnes of gold
That is just for cloth So much for "India exported nothing, it's all food"
We havent even talked about the other industries like Shop building.
Europe had no products to offer, because guess what, they were totally agrarian, and produced *nothing* of worth. They had to loot gold from South America and get it to India, because that was the only good thing they could get.
into India. During the 17th century so much Indian cotton was imported into England that the English woollen handweaving industry suffered and declined. English weavers protested, and eventually at the end of the 18th century England loaded a duty of 75% onto Indian cotton imports.
Why do you think the Charka became a symbol of protest?
We havent even gotten to the demolishing of the education system, taxation policies which contributed to mass famines resulting in millions of deaths.
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/...-de-industrialization-under-british-rule.html ,
Science, Technology, Imperialism, and War - Google Books,
Metallurgical Heritage of India
In fact a comprehensive discussion of this was done on a Chinese forums spanning 100 plus pages (will try to find a link later), it was pretty much one of the best discussions I've seen on the effect of colonialism on India and China. It's laughable that you claim Chinese never talk about this, how many Chinese forums do you read?
