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Comment by amriksohata | Hacker News Reader

Reading about the GDP of India and China, both two were the richest countries in the world before Mughal and British invasions. There was a reason they called India the jewel in the crown, it was the biggest transfer of wealth from the east to the west

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As awful as the theft of wealth was, the bigger crime was the prevention of industrialization. India was directly stopped by britain from industrializing because britain didn't want a competitor and rather wanted to use india for resources to power its industrialization. China directly somewhat, but mostly indirectly was prevented from industrialization by western powers ( and eventually japan ) who destabilized china and seized its major ports, industries, resources, etc.

If india and china were able to free itself and industrialize when japan did, india and china would easily have the two largest economies in the world today. It's disheartening thinking about all the wealth, knowledge, goods, discoveries etc the world missed out because of shortsighted greed and brutality.

India before industralisation, did not need industralisation. It was rich because it had the oil of the time, which was cotton, spices, fertile land. The industry was removed and moved to Britain. Britain needed the industry as it was a relatively poor country, India did not.

I think you are conflating industry and markets. Britain already had the industries when it started colonizing India.

What it needed were the markets to sell the factory produce. That is what they traded in return for the spices and raw materials.

Hence it destroyed the competing industries in it's colonies like India - which was a huge market.

It had industries, but India did not need these industries. This was not trade, this was loot. Read up on the East India Company. It did not destroy competing industries, they shut down Muslin cloth production in Bengal lol.

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