Question

The British conquest had a pronounced and profound economic impact on India. Discuss

Answer 1

Approach:

• Try to brief the nature of economic policies of Britishers in the introduction part. You can also elaborate the statement itself.
• Try to highlight the impacts felt on different sections/sectors of the Indian economy due to the policies of Britishers.
• Try to summarize the answer in your conclusion.

The British conquest had a pronounced (noticeable) and profound (extremely felt) economic impact on India.
The economic policies followed by the British led to the rapid transformation of India’s economy into a colonial economy whose nature and the structure was determined by the needs of the British economy.
The results of this subordination of the Indian economy to the interests of British trade and industry were many and varied.

1. Deindustrialization: During this period, India’s share of the world economy collapsed from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950. Compared to the Mughal Era, India during the British colonial era had a lower per- capita income, a large decline in the secondary sector, and lower levels of urbanisation.
2. Ruin of artisans and craftsman: There was a sudden and quick collapse of the urban handicrafts. This collapse was caused largely by competition with the cheaper imported machine- goods from Britain.
3. The impoverishment of the peasantry: The policies of land revenue system like permanent settlement, ryotwari system and mahalwari system were designed to extract maximum revenue from the peasants. The evil of high revenue demand was made worse by the fact that the peasant got little economic return for it. The Government spent very little on improving agriculture.
4. Stagnation and Deterioration of Agriculture: As a result of the overcrowding of agriculture, excessive land revenue demand, increasing indebtedness, etc, Indian agriculture started to stagnate and even deteriorate resulting in extremely low yield per acre.
5. Development of modern industries: Industries developed during the second half of the 19th century but most of the modern Indian industries were owned or controlled by British Capital as colonial government followed policy of favouring foreign capital instead of domestic capital.
6. The ruin of old zamindars and rise of new landlordism: By 1815, half the total land in Bengal had passed into hands of money-lenders, merchants, and rich peasants who usually got the land cultivated by tenants. The new zamindars, with increased powers but with little or no avenues for new investments, resorted to land- grabbing and sub-infeudation.
7. Poverty and famines

The British conquest had a devastating effect on the economic structure of the country as there was hardly any aspect of the Indian economy that was not changed for the better or for worse during the entire period of British rule down to 1947.