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Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1]

And, India got partitioned into 3 countries, all of which have spend insane amounts of resources fighting each other when that same could have been spent on economic development and other hostile neighbors of the unified India would have been smaller in size to be a threat.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_economy_of_the...

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> India got partitioned into 3 countries ...

This is a huge simplification of the history of the Indian subcontinent. The British are the architects of the new boundary lines, but they are also the architects of what is now a unified country, India. Indian subcontinent as a unified entity prior to the arrival of the British as a major colonizing force in India is a lie. India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play their little game of "divide and rule".

None of this absolves them of responsibility, but this over-simplified statement irks me, as it is a gross misrepresentation of the politics of the Indian subcontinent prior to the British.

> India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play their little game of "divide and rule".

The fact that entire region was called Bharat escapes you I think. Just before British India was centrally organized and ruled by Mughals and Marathas so your argument does not stand.

As far as "divide and rule" is concerned, due to the vastness of India regional leadership was always delegated. British utilized this structure to their advantage.

Linking to my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18685130

Delegation is not the same as "divide and rule". There was active animosity amongst these provinces. The British played Bengal and Punjab against each other, for example. The Marathas did resist the British in their own strongholds, but they never centrally ruled an undivided India. It was a big empire nonetheless.

> The fact that entire region was called Bharat...

I don't think that important fact inherently implies a unity that was never there. The(roughly defined) region called "Europe" has never been under the control of a unitary state or empire, even in the times of the Romans.

Europe is a continent and not a country and Romans did rule almost entire continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#/media/File:Roman...

That's incorrect IMHO. The Mughals had ruled over an area greater than India's current area. The Marathas too had almost replaced Mughals after their downfall, and the British replaced Marathas. There was infighting in a few kingdoms towards the south and the east, and that's where the British gained their initial territory.

There was a concept of a united India/Hindustan/Bharat/Aryavart in Ancient times.

You can read about the disintegration of the Mughal empire after Aurangzeb here: http://www.historydiscussion.net/empires/later-mughals-and-d...

The Marathas never controlled an "undivided India" given the extent of their empire at it's peak: https://www.mapsofindia.com/history/maratha-empire.html

Not to mention, even Akbar did not have the North east and the southernmost parts of India.

The rise of the Sikh empire, and the Deccan sultanate also limited the extent of the later Mughal and Maratha kingdoms.

I did not question that these empires had their time. But the notion of undivided India as united as one under the Mughals at the time right before the British arrived is wrong. Ancient times do not affect contemporary affairs, or in this case affairs of 1750s are not affected by the Maurya dynasty's claim on some version of modern day India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.

I don't know much about the history of India. But this video shows a huge part of present day India and Pakistan being part of the Mughal empire in 1705.

Video: https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=628 (at 10:28).

Some other interesting time lines from a union of India perspective from this video:

Maurya Empire: 270 BCE (at 2:01, https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=122)

Delhi Sultanate: 1344 (at 8:44 https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=524)

Edit: Found another video that matches with the above video regarding Mughal Empire: https://youtu.be/wYu2jyVTSc8?t=76 (at 1:16).

The analogous list is to point to the Romans in 100AD, and Charlemagne in 800, and Napoleon in 1800, and conclude that clearly the EU has always been a united super-state.

The peaks were quite short-lived, often only one ruler's lifespan (natural or otherwise). There were long gaps between. There were many competing powers.

And that's OK! I mean, are we sure that the world in which some Aurangzeb figure won, and created a united (persian-speaking, 100% sunni) subcontinent, is a better place?

>To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1]

Industrialization happened in this time period. India did not industrialize as rapidly or to the same extent as Europe and the US.

Share of world income is a zero sum game. Some of that decline is made up for by increased income elsewhere. The absolute income in India certainly did not decrease from 1700 to 1952.

These numbers would be more useful with a comparison to China, Russia and Japan over the same time period (all of which industrialized later than Europe and the US).

Where did the British get a lot of raw materials for their industrialization. Where did they dump a lot of their products ?

Doesn't this line of reasoning apply equally to the Swiss? They had no colonies, and are richer than Britain today. Probably were in 1952 as well.

Actually by 1952, probably not. Switzerland's economy was pretty much agricultural up to the second world war (remittence payments from the Vatican were a noticeable source of foreign income into the early 20th century!).

WWII offered a source of capital (people stashing their money into a neutral state, and many never asking for it back) and some industrialization, but the Switzerland we think of today is really a product of the late 50s/1960s.

Indeed. But German industrialisation didn't seem to need much from tropical colonies.

And conversely, all those fabulous silver mines didn't exactly leave the Spaniards with a head-start in modernisation.

Most places were pretty agricultural in 1952 :) This dataset has Switzerland at #2 in 1950, and a comment says UK would have been #7.

Economic growth in europe only really took off to levels we think of as "today" after 30+ years of intense postwar growth. It was rich before that, but still very rural. Movies of the era are quite revealing.

I an genuinely curious if there is an argument against Switzerland et al being counterexamples to the colonialism/wealth argument. The strongest one I can think of would be that Switzerland et al benefitted from proximity to capital and to the new techniques discovered by capital.

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/GDP-...

>And, India got partitioned into 3 countries

India consisted of more than 3 "countries" prior to the arrival of the British.

> And, India got partitioned into 3 countries

Technically two, one of which had non-contiguous parts which later had a falling out.

Technically (the best kind of) correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War

> And, India got partitioned into 3 countries, all of which have spend insane amounts of resources fighting each other when that same could have been spent on economic development and other hostile neighbors of the unified India would have been smaller in size to be a threat.

Which they weren't forced too. That's not a "cost" of colonization but a cost of not choosing another path.

They weren't forced to partition, but they were led down that path by the British in an attempt to divide them as they left. The thinking was that the divided former colonies would drive themselves into such a state such that they would invite their colonial masters back to rule over them.

There was definitely religious violence in South Asia before colonization, but the scale and depth definitely increased during and after.

The counter argument is that a unified subcontinent would degrade into chaos as people kept fighting each other internally. Although, India itself has remained largely democratic (perhaps overlooking the Maoist insurgency) so maybe that wasn’t a huge concern.

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