Historical Overview of Colonial Rule and Its Impact on Indian Structure

INTRODUCTION

British impact on economic and social development was, therefore, limited. Total output and population increased substantially but the gain in per capita output was small or negligible. It is interesting to speculate about India's potential economic fate if it had not had two centuries of British rule. There are three major alternatives which can be seriously considered. One would have been the maintenance of indigenous rule with a few foreign enclaves, as in China. Given the fissiparous forces in Indian society, it is likely that there would have been major civil wars in China in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century and the country would probably have split up. Without direct foreign interference with its educational system, it is less likely that India would have developed a modernizing intelligentsia than China because Indian society was less rational and more conservative, and the Chinese had a much more homogeneous civilization around which to build their reactive nationalism. If this situation had prevailed, population would certainly have grown less but the average standard of living might possibly have been a little higher because of the bigger upper class, and the smaller drain of resources abroad (1). Another alternative to British rule would have been conquest and maintenance of power by some other West European country such as France or Holland. This probably would not have produced results very different in economic terms from British rule. The third hypothesis is perhaps the most intriguing, i.e. conquest by a European power, with earlier accession to independence. If India had had self-government from the 1880s, after a century and a quarter of British rule, it is likely that both income and population growth would have been accelerated. There would have been a smaller drain of investible funds abroad, greater tariff protection, more state enterprise and favours to local industry, more technical training - the sort of things which happened after 1947. However, India would probably not have fared as well as Meiji Japan, because the fiscal leverage of government would have been smaller, zeal for mass education less, and religious and caste barriers would have remained as important constraints on productivity. The biggest change the British made in the social structure was to replace the warlord aristocracy by an efficient bureaucracy and army. The traditional system of the East India Company had been to pay its servants fairly modest salaries, and to let them augment their income from private transactions. This arrangement worked reasonably well before the conquest of Bengal, but was inefficient as a way of remunerating the officials of a substantial territorial Empire because (a) too much of the profit went into private hands rather than the Company's coffers, and (b) an over rapacious short-term policy was damaging to the productive capacity of the economy and likely to drive the local population to revolt, both of which were against the Company's longer-term interests.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

According to anthropologist Ania Loomba in her book colonialism/ Postcolonialism (1998), colonialism restricts the original citizens and this creates the complex relationships in human history. Sociologist Ronald J. Horvath considered colonialism as: ―a form of domination and Colonialism was not an identical process in different parts of the world but every where it locked the original inhabitants and the new comers into the most complex and traumatic relationships in human history.(AniaLoomba 1998) Therefore, the history of colonialism has existed all over the parts of the world. She also points out the relationship between colonialism and capitalism. She stated: ―colonialism was the midwife that assisted at the birth of European capitalism.(GayatriChakravorty 2014) Professor Darrell. J. Koslowski believed that colonialism is ―a system of direct political and cultural control by powerful country over a weaker one.‖(Ania Loomba1998) Lecturer Jane Hiddleston described colonialism as: ―the conquest and subsequent control of another country, and involves both the subjugation of that country‟s native peoples and the administration of its government, economy and produce.‖ (Darrell J2010) Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (2005), novelist EllekeBohemer involved colonialism as: ―the consolidation of imperial power, and is manifested in the settlement of territory, the exploitation of resources, and the attempt to govern the indigenous inhabitants of occupied lands often by force.‖( Jane Hidlesston2009) It is a settlement and a way of exploitation and governing the colonies‟ resources. On the other hand, historian Edward Said used ―imperialism‖ rather than colonialism to mean ―the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a domination metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory;―colonialism‖, which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory.‖(Elleke Bohemer2005) Professors Childs and Williams in An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory (1997) described imperialism as: ―the extension and expansion of political, legal and military control.‖( Edward Said1997) Colonialism is a result of imperialism in the implementation of settlements on distant territories. It is a form of the ideology of imperialism and concerns the settlement of one group in a new land. Professor John McLeod claimed: ―colonialism is only form of practice which results from the ideology of imperialism, and specifically concerns the settlement of one group of people in a new location.‖( John McLeod2000) Anthropologist AniaLoomba is convinced that capitalism is the distinguishing feature between colonialism and imperialism. However, colonialism Loomba1998)

The first detailed and coherent critique of colonialism in its various aspects was made by the early Indian nationalists during the period 1870-1905. In the interwar period, first the Comintern and its journals and then several scholars - such as Owen Lattimore, Keith Mitchell, and Joseph Barnes - writing in the journals Far Eastern Quarterly, (New York) and Amerasia (New York) and associated with the Institute of Pacific. Affairs in New York made important contributions in the study of specific areas. At Yale, Leland Jenks promoted the study of American imperialism in different areas of Latin America. Leonard Wolf provided insights into the working of colonialism in Africa. A major non-Marxist approach came from J. S. Furnivall. At a popular plane, Kumar Ghoshal‗s work deserves mention. In India, nationalist economists - K. T. Shah, C. N. Vakil, Bal Krishna, Wadia and Merchant, among others - continued to provide empirical and theoretical support to the early nationalist approach. But the most significant and structured contribution came from R. Palme Dutt in his India Today and then by A. R. Desai in his Social Background of Indian Nationalism. The cultural aspects of colonialism have been discussed by A. Cabral, Franz Fanon, Renato Constantino and Edward Said. This field is also being yearly enriched. the colonial state and colonial political institutions and their relation to colonial economic and state structures and to the metropolitan state structure, political system, and political institutions is yet awaited, as also a serious study of colonial ideology. (To my knowledge, the only discussion of the former, i.e., the colonial state, though very brief and synoptic, is in my article Colonialism, stages of colonialism and colonial state [reproduced in the present volume] and my recent work, The Indian National Congress: The .Long-Term Dynamics.) Some important aspects of colonialism when viewed as a structure. I will start by pointing out some important aspects that I will not be dealing with. I will not take up in detail the impact of colonialism. I will not at all take up the reverse impact of colonialism on the economic development of the metropolis which was rather significant during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I will also not be able to discuss the political, administrative, cultural and social aspects of colonialism - nor the ideological justification and legitimation of colonial domination earlier or today by imperialist statesmen, administrators and academics. Thus I will not be able to make a critical examination of the spate of writings of economic

of Europe and the Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 2. (Those interested in a critique of the latter may see Social Scientist, nos. 139 and 140.)

Colonialism is best seen as a totality or a unified structure. All the changes and the newly formed institutions and structures form a network, mutually interconnected and reinforcing each other, which sub serve and bring into being the colonial structure. To see colonialism as a structure is also to realize that it will go on reproducing itself unless it is shattered. The first basic feature is the complete but complex integration and enmeshing of the colony with the world capitalist system in a subordinate or subservient position. Subordination means that the fundamental aspects of the colony's economy and society are not determined by its own needs or the needs and interests of its dominant social classes but by the needs and interests of the metropolitan economy and its capitalist class. It is important to note that subordination of the colony‘s economy and society is the crucial or determining aspect, and not mere linkage or integration with world capitalism or the world market. The latter i.e., linkage and integration with the world market, is true do not even of independent capitalist economies; nor does such linkage automatically lead to colonialism or semi-colonialism. The second feature of colonialism is encompassed by the twin notions of unequal exchange (Aghiri Emmanuel) and internal disarticulation of the colonial economy and the - articulation of its different disarticulated parts, through the world market and imperialist hegemony, with the metropolitan economy (S. Amin and HamzaAlavi). For example, the colony's agriculture does not directly relate to the colony‗s industrial sector; it does not articulate internally. The third feature of colonialism is the drain of wealth or unilateral transfer of social surplus to the metropolis through unrequited exports. This aspect was the heart of the early Indian nationalists‗critique of colonialism and their explanation of the economic underdevelopment and poverty of India. Marx‗s rethinking on the role of colonialism in India was also strongly influenced by this aspect. In the 1950s, through the writings of Paul Baran, once again the question of the utilization of social surplus became centre stage in the discussion of colonial underdevelopment. The fourth basic feature of colonialism is foreign political domination or the existence and role of the only after bitter political experience, and was given full place in their analysis by the Marxists, the fuller historical role of the colonial state still awaits analysis. In fact, there is an urgent need for a theory of the colonial state and for a historical study of the nature of the colonial state and its relation to colonial society.

Several Indian creators have argued that British rule prompted a de-industrialization of India. R.C. Dutt argued, "India in the eighteenth century was an extraordinary manufacturing just as an incredible agricultural nation, and the results of the Indian loom supplied the business sectors of Asia and Europe. It is, lamentably, genuine that the East India Company and the British Parliament, following the narrow minded commercial policy of a hundred years back, discouraged Indian manufacturers in the early long periods of British rule so as to empower the rising fabricates of England. Their fixed policy, pursued amid the most recent many years of the eighteenth century and the primary many years of the nineteenth, was to make India subservient to the businesses of Great Britain, and to influence the Indian individuals to develop raw produce just, so as to supply material for the looms and makes of Great Britain" (41). R. Palme Dutt, composing forty years after the fact, argued that the procedure had been constant: "the genuine picture of modern India is an image of what has been apropos called "de-industrialization"- that is, the decline of the old craftsmanship industry without the compensating advance of modern industry. The development of factory industry has not surpassed the decay of handiwork. The procedure of decay normal for the nineteenth century has been conveyed forward in the twentieth century and in the post-war period" (42). Nehru, in his mainstream history is a conflation of the two Dutts, argued that the British de-industrialized India, and this "is the genuine the fundamental reason for the appalling poverty of the Indian individuals, and it is of comparatively recent birthplace" (43). There is a decent arrangement of truth in the de-industrialization contention. Moghul India had a greater industry than whatever other nation which turned into an European province, and was one of a kind in being an industrial exporter in pre-pilgrim times. A large piece of the Moghul business was destroyed throughout British rule. In any case, it is imperative to see definitely how this de-industrialization occurred and to endeavor to get some thought of its quantitative hugeness in various periods. Oversimplified explanations, which misrepresent the job of British commercial policy and disregard the job of changes in demand and British cleared out the Moghul court, and eliminated 75% of the warlord nobility (all with the exception of those in august states). They likewise eliminated the greater part of the nearby boss (zamindars) and in their place built up an organization with European tastes. The new rulers wore European garments and shoes, drank imported brew, wines and spirits, and utilized European weapons. Their preferences were copied by the male individuals from the new Indian 'working class' who emerged to go about as their representatives and middle people. Because of these political and social changes, around seventy five percent of the local demand for extravagance handiworks were destroyed. This was a shattering hit to manufacturers of fine muslins, adornments, extravagance attire and footwear, enriching swords and weapons. It isn't known how essential these things were in national income, yet my very own conjecture would be that the home market for these products was around 5 percent of Moghul national income. The fare showcase was likely another 1.5 percent of national income, and the greater part of this market was likewise lost. There was a reduction of European demand in light of the change in style tastes after the French revolution, and the enormously reduced cost of increasingly ordinary materials in light of the revolution of textile technology in England. The second hit to Indian industry originated from massive imports of modest textiles from England after the Napoleonic wars. In the period 1896-1913, imported piece products supplied around 60 percent of Indian fabric consumption and the extent was presumably higher for the majority of the nineteenth century. Home spinning, which was an extra time action of town ladies, was extraordinarily reduced. A large extent of town hand-loom weavers more likely than not been displaced, however many changed to utilizing factory rather than home-spun yarn. Indeed, even as late as 1940 33% of Indian piece products were produced close by looms (46). The new made textile merchandise were significantly less expensive (47) and of preferable quality over hand-loom items, so their approach expanded textile consumption. Toward the finish of British rule, there can be no uncertainty that fabric consumption per head was substantially larger than in the Moghul time frame. We don't have a clue how huge an expansion in textile consumption happened, yet on the off chance that per capita consumption of cotton fabric multiplied (which appears to be very conceivable), at that point the displacement impact available loom weavers would have been littler than at first shows up. The hand-loom weavers who produced 33% of yield in 1940 would have been creating 66% if there had been no expansion in per capita consumption. In time, India developed her own textile manufacturing industry which displaced British imports. Be that as it may, there was a hole of several decades prior to manufacturing began and a time of 130 years before permitted to force a defensive duty in the manner that was done in the USA and France in the initial couple of many years of the nineteenth century, yet the British forced a policy of organized commerce. English imports entered India obligation free, and when a little tax was required for income purposes Lancashire weight prompted the inconvenience of a relating extract obligation on Indian items to forestall them picking up an upper hand. This without a doubt incapacitated industrial advancement. On the off chance that India had been politically autonomous, her expense structure would likely have been extraordinary. During the 1880s, Indian traditions incomes were just 2.2 percent of the trade turnover, for example the lowest proportion in any nation. In Brazil, on the other hand, import obligations at that period were 21 percent of trade turnover. In the event that India had enjoyed protection there is no uncertainty that its textile industry would have begun earlier and become quicker. The principal textile mills were begun during the 1850s by Indian capitalists who had made their cash exchanging with the British and had procured some instruction in English. Cotton textiles were propelled in Bombay with monetary and administrative assistance from British exchanging organizations. India was the primary nation in Asia to have a modern textile industry, going before Japan by twenty years and China by forty years. Cotton mills were begun in Bombay in 1851, and they focused on coarse yarns sold domestically and to China and Japan; yarn exports were about portion of yield. Modern jute manufacturing began about a similar time as cotton textiles. The principal jute mill was built in 1854 and the business expanded rapidly in the vicinity of Calcutta. The business was largely in the hands of outsiders (primarily Scots). Somewhere in the range of 1879 and 1913 the quantity of jute shafts climbed ten times - a lot quicker than development in the cotton textile industry. The jute business had the capacity to grow quicker than cotton textiles since its deals did not depend so intensely on the poverty stricken domestic markets. The greater part of jute yield was for export. Coal mining, for the most part in Bengal, was another industry which accomplished noteworthiness. Its yield, which by 1914 had reached 15.7 million tons, largely fulfilled the needs of the Indian railroads. In 1911 the main Indian steel mill was built by the Tata Company at Jamshedpur in Bihar. Nonetheless, creation did not occur on a huge scale before the First World War. The Indian steel industry began fifteen years after the fact than in China, where the main steel mill was built at Hangyang in 1896. The main Japanese mill was built in 1898. In both China and Japan the principal steel mills (and the main textile mills) were government ventures. Indian firms in industry,

undertaking. Amid the First World War, absence of British imports fortified the hold of Indian firms on the home market for textiles and steel. After the war, under nationalist weight, the administration began to support Indian endeavor in its buy of stores and it consented to make a tax commission in 1921 which began raising levies for protective reasons. By 1925, the normal duty level was 14 for each cent49 contrasted and 5 percent pre-war. The methodology for fixing levies was extensive and tax protection was granted more promptly to outside possessed than to Indian firms, however during the 1930s protection was strongly expanded (50). The legislature was all the more ready to ensure the textile business when the risk originated from Japan and not the UK. Somewhere in the range of 1930 and 1934 the duty on cotton material was raised from 11 to 50 percent, albeit British imports were agreed an edge of inclination. Because of these measures, there was extensive substitution of neighborhood textiles for imports. In 1896, Indian mills supplied just 8 percent of all out fabric consumption; in 1913, 20 percent; in 1936, 62 percent; and in 1945, 76 percent (51). By the last date there were no imports of piece products. Until the finish of the Napoleonic wars, cotton produces had been India's primary export. They reached their crest in 1798, and in 1813 despite everything they added up to £2 million, however from that point they fell rapidly (52). After thirty years, half of Indian imports were cotton textiles from Manchester. This breakdown in India's primary export caused an issue for the Company, which needed to discover approaches to change over its rupee revenue into assets transferable to the UK. The Company in this manner advanced exports of raw materials on a larger scale, including sugar, silk, saltpeter and indigo and extraordinarily expanded exports of opium which were traded against Chinese tea. These dopepeddling endeavors incited the Anglo-Chinese war of 1842, after which access to the Chinese market was incredibly widened. By the center of the nineteenth century opium was by a wide margin the greatest export of India, and stayed in this situation until the 1880s when its relative and absolute significance started to decline. Another new export was raw cotton, which couldn't contend great in European markets against higher quality American and Egyptian cottons, (aside from amid the US Civil War), however found a market in Japan and China. Sugar exports were built up after 1833 when the cancelation of servitude raised West Indian creation costs, however India had no long-run relative preferred standpoint in sugar exports. Indigo (used to color textiles) was an imperative export until the 1890s when it was hit by rivalry from German synthetic colors. In any case, India started to experience the ill effects of Japanese challenge during the 1890s. Indian yarn in China. The Japanese set up production lines in China after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5. Prior to this, India had supplied 96 percent of Chinese yarn imports, the UK 4 percent, and Japan none. Inside three years the Japanese were providing a quarter to Chinese imports, and by 1914 India was exporting less yarn to China than was Japan. Amid the First World War Japan gained further ground in the Chinese market and by 1924 supplied threequarters of Chinese imports. By 1928 India was exporting just 3 percent of her yarn yield. Before the finish of the 1930s, Indian exports of yarn to China and Japan had vanished, piece products exports had tumbled off, and India imported both yarn and piece merchandise from China and Japan. Indian exports developed decently rapidly in the period up to 1913, yet their development was slower than that of most other Asian nations which had a characteristic asset blessing offering more prominent open doors for trade. As a result, in 1913, India had a littler trade for each head than most nations with the exception of China. All things considered, exports were 10.7 percent of national income, most likely a higher proportion than has been reached previously or since. Amid the First World War, when the sterling conversion scale was permitted to coast, the rupee increased in value. Tragically, when sterling continued a fixed (and exaggerated) equality in 1925, the rupee conversion scale was fixed over the pre-war level. This overvaluation facilitated the monetary issues of government in making exchanges to the UK and empowered British inhabitants in India, or those on Indian annuities in the UK, to get all the more sterling for their rupees, yet it made it important for domestic economic policy to be deflationary (in cutting wages) and significantly ruined Indian exports, especially those to or contending with China and Japan. Accordingly, Indian exports tumbled from 1913 to 1937, a more unfortunate exhibition than that of practically some other nation. At autonomy exports were under 5 percent of national income. In the event that we see Indian export execution from 1850 to 1950 it was more regrettable than that of some other nation in Asia. The Second World War gave a fillip to Indian industrial yield, yet there was very little increment in limit as a result of the trouble of bringing in capital products and the absence of a domestic capital merchandise industry. A considerable lot of the most worthwhile commercial, budgetary, business and ranch occupations in the modern division were involved by outsiders. In spite of the fact that the East India Company's lawfully upheld imposing business model benefits were finished in 1833, the British kept on practicing successful predominance through the arrangement of 'overseeing offices'. with the vast majority of India's international trade. They were firmly connected with British banks, protection and transportation organizations. Overseeing organizations had a semi imposing business model in access to capital, and they had interlocking directorships which gave them power over provisions and markets (53). They overwhelmed the outside business sectors in Asia. They would be wise to access to government authorities than did Indians. The organizations were from numerous points of view ready to take choices ideal to their own advantages as opposed to those of investors. They were paid commissions dependent on gross benefits or absolute deals and were regularly specialists for the raw materials utilized by the organizations they oversaw. In this manner the Indian capitalists who emerged were exceedingly reliant on British commercial capital and numerous parts of industry were overwhelmed by British firms, for example shipping, banking, protection, coal, ranch yields and jute. Indian industrial effectiveness was hampered by the British organization's disregard of specialized instruction, and the hesitance of British firms and overseeing offices to give preparing of administrative experience to Indians. Indeed, even in the Bombay textile industry, where a large portion of the capital was Indian, 28 percent of the administrative and supervisory staff were British in 1925 (42 percent in 1895) and the British part was considerably greater in progressively complex ventures. This normally raised Indian generation costs (54). At lower levels there was far reaching utilization of agents for contracting laborers and looking after control, and specialists themselves were a totally untalented gathering who needed to pay off the merchants to land and hold their positions. There were additionally issues of race, language and rank qualifications between the executives, administrators and specialists (55). The little size and much enhanced yield of the undertakings blocked productivity. It is halfway therefore (and the overvaluation of the cash) that Indian exports experienced issues in rivaling Japan. The essential confinements on the development of industrial yield were the extraordinary poverty of the provincial populace, and the way that a large extent of the first class had a preference for imported merchandise or exported their acquiring power. The administration in the long run gave tax protection yet did not itself make industrial plants, support advancement banks, or offer inclination to nearby industry in allocating contracts. The financial framework gave little help to industry and specialized training was poor. The vast majority of these things changed when India ended up autonomous with the exception of the first and most essential, for example the outrageous poverty of the rustic populace which constrained the extension of the 19 advertise for industrial merchandise. When of autonomy, large-scale factory industry in India utilized under 3 million capita industrial yield at autonomy was higher than somewhere else in Asia outside Japan, and the greater part of India's exports were fabricates. English policy was less oppressive to neighborhood industry than that of other frontier control, and had allowed the development of a little however incredible class of Indian business visionaries. It ought to be noted, in any case, that modern industry was intensely moved in Calcutta, Bombay and Ahmedabad. The region which was to progress toward becoming Pakistan had for all intents and purposes no industry by any means.

There has been a good deal of controversy amongst statisticians about the rate of growth of income in India in the colonial period. The argument is politically colored and the statistics are poor. For the last fifty years of British rule there is enough statistical information to make rough estimates of the growth of national income. My own estimates, which are based largely on work by Blyn and Sivasubramonian, show no increase in per capita income over the years 1900-46 (see Appendix B). Other observers have estimates which show some growth over this period as well as in the period from 1857.

1. Capital‘s is taken to mean capitalists, people whose actions propel accumulation process whreas Capitalism is used to refer the properties of the social structure in which these actors are located (Vivek Chibber,― Making Sense of Postcolonial Theory: a Response to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak‖, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, October 03, 2014, 621). 2. Ania Loomba, op.cit., p4. 3. Darrell J. Koslowski (2010). Key Concepts in American History: Colonialism (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010), 1. 4. Jane Hidlesston (2009). Understanding Postcolonialism (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2009), 2. 5. Elleke Bohemer (2005). Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors Second Edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2. 6. Stern, P. J. (2011). The Company State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire

(2018). Colonialism and peace and conflict studies (Introduction Article in journal to be published). Peace and Conflict Studies, 25(1). 8. Kolsky, E. (2010). Colonial justice in British India: White violence and the rule of law. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 9. Lyer, L. (2010). Direct versus indirect colonial rule in India: long-term consequences. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4), pp. 693–713. 10. Otter, S. D. (2012). Law, authority and colonial rule. In D. M. Peers & N. Gooptu (Eds.), India and the British Empire (pp. 168-190). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Ph.D. History, OPJS University, Churu, Rajasthan yadavrohini02@gmail.com