Economic History of India
Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Economic History of India is a two-volume book (1902–1904) by Romesh Chunder Dutt, an Indian who had retired from the Indian Civil Service (ICS). It blamed British policies for India's poverty and its repeated famines: heavy land revenue, unfair tariffs (taxes on trade) and one-sided trade rules. It is a key text of the early nationalist economic critique, the argument that British rule was making India poor.
Example
Writing in the same years that Dadabhai Naoroji published Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901), Dutt traced how British policy harmed Indian farmers and weavers. Like Naoroji, he built his case on official facts and figures.
Don't confuse with
- Poverty and Un-British Rule in India: this was Dadabhai Naoroji's book of 1901, which worked out the size of the drain of wealth from British reports. Dutt's book covered the economic history more broadly.
Related concepts
- Drain of wealth
- William Digby
- Dadabhai Naoroji
- Poverty and Un-British Rule in India
- Romesh Chunder Dutt
- Home charges
- Colonial railways
- First railway line 1853
- Great Indian Peninsula Railway
- Guaranteed interest system