From its original base in Bengal, established in 1765, the EIC, through a policy of alliances and wars with indigenous rulers, controlled the subcontinent by 1848. The EIC was, however, a mercantilist company whose presence in India since 1600 was largely prompted by the European need for Indian cotton and silk manufactures. Before 1765, there were few demands in India for the manufactures of Europe, forcing the EIC to pay for its imports in bullion. The military conquest of Bengal in 1757 and the grant of its revenues in 1765 to the EIC dramatically changed its economic fortunes, and turned India into a supplier of ‘western Indian raw cotton, Punjab wheat, Bengal jute, Assam tea, south Indian oilseeds and hides and skins’. The political subjugation of India therefore implied economic subjugation since it was now integrated into an emerging global capitalist network, but as a captive market for the products of Britain. Over 190 years of British rule, the Indian subcontinent was therefore transformed from being a primary exporter of high-quality manufactures to large parts of the world to become a raw-material producer for the Industrial Revolution in England. In addition was the ‘drain of wealth’, which included ‘interest on foreign debt incurred by the East India Company, military expenditure, guaranteed interest on foreign investments in railways, irrigation, road transport and various other infrastructural facilities, the government purchase policy of importing all its stationery from England’. India also paid ‘home charges’—that is, for the secretary of state and his establishment at the India Office in London—and pension and training costs for the civilian and military personnel.

Women in the Colonial Economy

These transformations in the Indian economy profoundly affected the economic fortunes of all women. The dissolution of the traditional bases of the economy and the slow, partial and extremely limited emergence of a ‘modern’ sector in India undermined existing ways of life, exaggerated existing inequalities and cleavages (even within families) and led to absolute impoverishment.