¹ The difficulties of clear identification and unambiguous definition are legion, and hence the caution implied by the use of inverted commas. The three-fold classificationary system as developed by Clark, Fisher and Kuznets is of limited Third World application—and indeed the recent debate concerning ‘proto-industrialization’ in early modern Europe is beginning to cast a shadow over its general utility in the Western economies. Here, simply for the sake of expository convenience, I use the term to refer to a highly disparate range of activities including both the ‘organized’ and ‘unorganized’ subsectors (hardly an improvement!) which may be weakly differentiated from ‘primary’ and ‘tertiary’ pursuits—but only as a first, and really quite unsatisfactory, approximation.

² The variegated nature of the ‘organized sector’ of Indian industry in the year of Independence is conveniently presented in the Statistical Outline of Indian Economy, compiled by Kulkarni, V. G. with the assistance of D. D. Deshpande (Bombay, 1968), Section IV, Table IV. 17, pp. 52–82.Google Scholar

³ See the useful—and strangely neglected—study conducted by the League of Nations, Industrialization and Foreign Trade (New York, 1945).Google Scholar

⁴ Amiya Bagchi is one of the rare breed of scholars who manage to write with conviction about industrialization in the post-as well as the pre-Independence eras. Few orthodox economic historians feel at ease with the latter period, and even fewer development economists are willing to venture very far back into the past. It is no accident that Bagchi is inspired by the Marxian approach and this imparts a very useful degree of unity to his work, cf. his ‘Long-term Constraints on India's Industrial Growth 1951–68’ in Robinson, E. A. G. and Kidron, M. (eds), Economic Development in South Asia (London, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bagchi, A. K. and Banerjee, N. (eds), Change and Choice in Indian Industry (Calcutta, 1981)Google Scholar, esp. the Introduction; and The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge, 1982Google Scholar)–in addition to his well-known book and series of articles on industrialization and de-industrialization.

⁵ As reported in the Times Higher Educational Supplement, 27 January 1984.Google Scholar

⁶ See Bairoch, P., ‘International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980’, Journal of European Economic History 11 (2) 1982Google Scholar, and also Bairoch, P. and Levy-Leboyer, M. (eds), Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ See Reynolds, L. G., ‘The Spread of Economic Growth to the Third World: 1850–1980’, Journal of Economic Literature XXI (3) 1983.Google Scholar Another useful article in the same spirit is Lewis, W. A., ‘The Diffusion of Development’ in Wilson, T. and Skinner, A. S. (eds), The Market and the State (Oxford, 1976).Google Scholar

⁸ A bourgeoning—and largely Marxist-inspired—body of work has been building up on this area; many important articles have appeared in the Journal of Southern African Studies, Modern African Studies, the Review of African Political Economy, African Economic History and Economy and Society. An impressive monographic literature has also begun to emerge in the last decade, and for a small selection cf. Johnstone, F. A., Class, Race and Gold: A Study of Class Relations and Racial Discrimination (London, 1976)Google Scholar, Davies, R. H., Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa 1900–1960 (London, 1979)Google Scholar, van Onselen, C., Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886–1914, in 2 vols (London, 1982)Google Scholar, Levy, N., The Foundations of the South African Cheap Labour System (London, 1982)Google Scholar, and Yudelman, D., The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capital and Organised Labour, 1902–1939 (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

⁹ Kemp, T., Industrialization in the Non-Western World (London, 1983).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Trebilcock, C., The Industrialization of the Continental Powers 1780–1914 (London, 1981).Google Scholar Trebilcock's study has been made possible because of the richness of the general treatment (e.g. The Fontana Economic History of Europe) and of the publication of useful monograph work, especially on France and Germany. The latest study of interest is Jones, A. (ed.), Industrialisation and the State in Germany 1800–1914 (London, 1984).Google Scholar

¹¹ Latham, A. J. H., The International Economy and the Undeveloped World (London, 1978)Google Scholar, and The Depression and the Developing World (London, 1981).Google Scholar

¹² The other limitations of the work have been forcefully expressed by his reviewers, cf. Mitchie, R. C., in the Economic History Review XXXII (2) 1979, pp. 298fCrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tomlinson, B. R., Economic History Review XXXV (2) 1982, pp. 333f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Ashworth, W., A Short History of the International Economy (London, 3rd edn, 1975)Google Scholar; Kenwood, A. G. and Lougheed, A. L., The Growth of the International Economy 1820–1960 (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Gould, J. D., Economic Growth in History (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Foreman-Peck, J., A History of the World Economy: International Economic Relations since 1850 (London, 1983).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Such as Samir Amin, A. G. Frank, F. Cardoso and Immanuel Wallerstein.

¹⁵ See Brewer, A., Marxist Theories of Imperialism (London, 1980)Google Scholar, for a pithy discussion of internal differences within the Marxian school, and also Limqueco, P. and McFarlane, B., Neo-Marxist Theories of Development (London, 1983).Google Scholar One of the most ferocious lines of attack on the ‘New Left’ has come from Bill Warren (a pre-Lenin sort of Marxist), see his Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London, 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Very roughly, from History: ‘traditional economic history’; ‘new economic history’; ‘new social or people's history’. From Economics: ‘orthodox development (Liberal) economies’; ‘structuralism’; the ‘new neo-classical economies’; the return to ‘Classical economies’; and the many strands of the Marxian, Neo-Marxian and Dependency political-economy approaches.

¹⁷ For an outline of the debate see O'Brien, P., ‘European Economic Development: The Contribution of the Periphery’, Economic History Review XXXV (1) 1982Google Scholar, and the exchange between O'Brien and Wallerstein in the Economic History Review XXXVI (4) 1983, pp. 580–5.Google Scholar Also of relevance is Alavi's, H. ‘India: The Transition to Colonial Capitalism’, in McEasterne, D. et al. , Capitalism and Colonial Production (London, 1982), pp. 23–76.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Bairoch, ‘Industrialization Levels’. It is as well to note that these estimates were made prior to the appearance of a number of recent—but still highly questionable—statistical compilations, such as Alan Heston's reworking of India's national income data, as reported in his Chapter IV in the Cambridge Economic History of India, [C.E.H.I.], vol. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The widely acknowledged difficulties of arriving at a rigorous general definition of this term (see the discussion between Cairncross, A. K. and Kaldor, N., ‘What is de-industrialisation?’ in Blackaby, F. (ed.), De-industrialisation (London, 1977), pp. 5–25Google Scholar) are, of course, greatly compounded when data relating to the behaviour of crucial variables—particularly the real value of sectoral output shares, total output, and the levels of sectoral and total employment—are sketchy or simply absent. Quite clearly, time-series of absolute values and volumes are required before we can properly refute or validate the claim of de-industrialization; but it is precisely over the period 1750–1880 that such data, at least in the aggregate, are most scarce, fragmentary and crude. We are therefore faced with a number of unpalatable choices: we can extend the time-period forward (as did Thorner, see fn. 20 below)—and so omit what was probably the most significant relevant era; examine particular regions (Bagchi) or industries (Desai, Twomey) in the hope that they are somehow ‘representative’ and can hence be generalized; rely upon extremely indirect evidence such as the relative figures produced by Bairoch (a decline in the share of a rapidly growing level of output says little about absolute trends, of course, and the per capita estimates are only marginally more useful in this context: the case of the British economy in the late nineteenth century is instructive); abandon the terms and the connotation altogether, as suggested by Little, I. M. D., ‘Indian Industrialization before 1945’, in Gersovitz, M. et al. (eds), The Theory and Experience of Economic Development: Essays in Honour of Sir W. A. Lewis (London, 1982), fn. 1, p. 369Google Scholar, and seconded, perhaps not surprisingly, by Lal, D., The Poverty of Development Economics (London, 1983), pp. 84ffGoogle Scholar; or use it in a frankly wide and non-technical sense to refer to the process discussed here.

²⁰ Since the appearance of the articles by Thorner, Daniel ‘De-industrialisation in India 1881–1931’, in Daniel, and Thorner, Alice, Land and Labour in India (Bombay, 1965, pp. 70–81)Google Scholar, and Morris, M. D. (‘Towards a Re-interpretation of Nineteenth Century Indian Economic History’, Journal of Economic History 23 (4) 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a large number of important contributions have been made. All the essays in the famous ‘re-interpretation’ debate refer, directly or indirectly, to the issue, cf. Morris, M. D. et al. , Indian Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Delhi, 1969)Google Scholar, and the most noteworthy of the journal pieces are Desai, M., ‘Demand for Cotton Textiles in Nineteenth Century India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 10 (4) 1971Google Scholar; Krishnamurthy, J., ‘Changes in the Composition of the Working Force in Manufacturing 1905–1951: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis’, Indian Economic and Social History Review IV (1) 1967Google Scholar, ‘De-Industrialisation Revisited’, Economic and Political Weekly 11 (26) June 1976Google Scholar, and most recently, his contribution to the Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 2, ch. VIGoogle Scholar; Chattopadhyay, R., ‘De-industrialisation in India Reconsidered’, Economic and Political Weekly 10, 12 03 1975Google Scholar; Bagchi, A. K., ‘De-industrialisation in Gangetic Bihar 1809–1910’, in De, B. (ed.), Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar (New Delhi, 1976), pp. 499–522Google Scholar, ‘De-industrialization in India in the Nineteenth Century: Some Theoretical Implications’, Journal of Development Studies 12 (2) 1976Google Scholar; Vicziany, M., ‘The De-industrialization of India in the Nineteenth Century: A Methodological Critique of Amiya Kumar Bagchi’Google Scholar, and Bagchi, A. K. ‘A Reply’, both in the Indian Economic and Social History Review XVI (2) 1979Google Scholar; Orr, A., ‘De-industrialisation in India—a Note’, Journal of Development Studies 16 (1) 1980Google Scholar; and Twomey, M. J., ‘Employment in Nineteenth Century Indian Textiles’, Exploration in Economic History 20 (1) 1983.Google Scholar The subject has also been recently discussed1—albeit briefly—by Macpherson, W. J., ‘Economic Development in India under the British Crown, 1858–1947’, in Youngson, A. J. (ed.), Economic Development in the Long-Run (London, 1972), pp. 138–43Google Scholar; Charlesworth, N., British Rule and the Indian Economy 1800–1914 (London, 1982), ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robb, P., ‘British Rule and Indian “Improvement”’, Economic History Review 34 (4) 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Perlin, F., ‘Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia’, Past and Present no. 98 1983, esp. pp. 34, 53.Google Scholar Perhaps it is worth mentioning, too, that a number of non-Indianist writers (such as Joan Robinson, T. Balogh, Paul Baran, A. G. Frank and Keith Griffin) have used the ‘Indian example’ (accepting the case for de-industrialization) to illustrate more general arguments concerning the effects of imperialism.

²¹ Perlin, , ‘Proto-Industrialization’, pp. 56ff.Google Scholar

²² See Singh, A. ‘UK Industry and the World Economy: a case of de-industrialisation?’ Cambridge Journal of Economics, 06 1977Google Scholar; and the collection of essays in Blackaby (ed.), De-industrialisation.

²³ See Charlesworth, , British Rule, pp. 12–14,Google Scholar and Robb, P., ‘British Rule’, pp. 518–23Google Scholar(i.e., if I understand his plea for a ‘middle-way’ correctly) for a short discussion of this line of reasoning. To be fair, the main thrust of the ‘Cambridge School’ has been directed more towards politics, local society, and the rural sector rather than to industry.

²⁴ See Edelstein, M., ‘Foreign investment and empire 1880–1914’, in Floud, R. and McCloskey, D. (eds), The Economic History of Britain Since 1700: Vol. 2, 1860 to the 1970s (Cambridge, 1981), esp. pp. 86–97.Google Scholar Earlier work on the New England Colonies and the effects of the Navigation Acts paved the way for this initiative; and on the narrower question of imperial investments see Davis, L. E. and Huttenback, R. A., ‘The Political Economy of British Imperialism: Measures of Benefit and Support’, Journal of Economic History XLII (1) 1982Google Scholar; and the controversy between Flynn, D. O. and St Clair, D., and Davis, and Huttenback, , ‘The Social Returns to Empire’, Journal of Economic History XLIII (4) 1983.Google Scholar As far as the imperial experience of the US is amenable to such an approach, see Lebergott, S., ‘The Returns to US Imperialism 1890–1929’ also in the Journal of Economic History XL (2) 1980.Google Scholar

²⁵ Sivasubramoniam, S., ‘Income from the Secondary Sector in India, 1900–47’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 14 (4) 1977Google Scholar; Heston (see fn. 18). Economic historians weaned on Simon Kuznets's meticulous work would doubtless have many reservations about both studies—especially Heston's—but given the intractable problems of deriving accurate national accounts for pre-Independent India (the long line of scholars who have tried to interpret the basic data all agree on this, although they disagree on much else), the yardstick of what is acceptable is necessarily wider. This, of course, does not excuse faulty reasoning or dubious assumptions, and Heston's chapter is replete with both these. This criticism has been forcefully made by both Amiya Bagchi and Angus Maddison during the Conference on the C.E.H.I., held at Selwyn College, Cambridge, 11–13 April 1984, and appears in Bagchi's review of the volume in the American Historical Review, April 1984, and Maddison's note ‘What Did Heston Do?’, paper presented to the Cambridge Conference (mimeo). Also see Pramit Chaudhuri's attack on Heston's general methodology in his review of the C.E.H.I., in the Economic Journal, March 1984, p. 193.

²⁶ Krishnamurthy (see fn. 20).

²⁷ Heston, (see fn. 18), Table 4.3A, p. 367.Google Scholar

²⁸ Maddison, A., Class Structure and Economic Growth: India and Pakistan since the Moghuls (London, 1971), Table II–1, p. 33.Google Scholar

²⁹ Bagchi, A. K., Private Investment in India 1900–1939 (Cambridge, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ray, R. K., Industrialization in India: Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector 1914–47 (Delhi, 1979).Google Scholar

³⁰ cf. see Johnson, B. L. C., Development in South Asia (London, 1983), ch. 1—for a popular accountGoogle Scholar; Little, ‘Indian Industrialization’, and Lal, Development Economics, for the neo-Classical position; Davey, B., The Economic Development of India (Nottingham, 1975), ch. IVGoogle Scholar, and Sen, A., The State, Industrialization and Class Formation in India: A Neo-Marxist Perspective on Colonialism, Underdevelopment and Development (London, 1982)—for a Radical viewGoogle Scholar; and Charlesworth, N., British Rule, ch. III, Fieldhouse, D. K., Colonialism 1810–1945 (London, 1981)Google Scholar, Albertini, R. von with Wirz, A., European Colonial Rule, 1880–1940: The Impact of the West on India, South-east Asia and Africa (Oxford, 1982), esp. pp. 48–67Google Scholar, and Schweinitz, K. de Jr., The Rise and Fall of British India: Imperialism or Inequality (London, 1983)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 5—for a more general perspective.

³¹ The most often quoted is that of Lidman, R. L. and Domrese, L. I., ‘India’, in Lewis, W. A. (ed.), Tropical Development, 1880–1913 (London, 1970), esp. pp. 318–29Google Scholar, but this is now dated and only really considers the three decades prior to the outbreak of the first world war. The literature (in English) emanating from the Soviet Union is, as might have been expected, disappointingly shallow and unoriginal, cf. Shirokov, G. K., Industrialisation of India (Moscow, 1973)Google Scholar, and Pavlow, V. et al. , India: Social and Economic Development, 18th-20th Centuries (Moscow, 1975), esp. ch. 3.Google Scholar

³² Derived from Heston, 1983 (see fn. 18), Tables 4.3A and 4.3B.

³³ M. Twomey's recent study of textiles (see fn. 20), is a welcome exception to the general rule, but is unlikely to be a general harbinger.

³⁴ Morris, M. D., ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry to 1947’, in C.E.H.I., vol. 2, p. 676.Google Scholar

³⁵ The emergence of the labour force has probably attracted more research interest in recent years than any other single aspect of modern industrialization. Since Professor Morris's tilt at what he called the ‘traditional view’ which seemed to stress the problems and constraints of recruiting and organizing a work force, a steady stream of mainly article literature has appeared—chiefly in the Indian Economic and Social History Review, but also more intermittently in Past and Present, the Journal of Peasant Studies, and even the Economic History Review (D. Mazumdar's piece in 1973, fn. 38 below).

³⁶ cf. Morris, M. D., The Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills 1854–1947 (Berkeley, 1965)Google Scholar; Bagchi, , Private Investment in India, esp. pt II; Singh, V. B. (ed.), Economic History of India 1857–1956 (Bombay, 1965) esp. chs 9, 10, 11, 14 and 16;Google Scholar and R. K. Ray, 1979, Industrialization in India, Ch. 3.

³⁷ Since this is not an essay in bibliography I do not intend to list the relevant contributions here. Of these institutions perhaps only the managing agency system has attracted some serious scholarly work—doubtless on account of its having been something of a hot political potato. But even here much of the work is now either badly dated (cf. P. S. Lokanathan, 1935; M. M. Mehta, 1955; S. K. Basu, 1958; N.C.A.E.R., 1959; R. K. Hazari, 1966; and A. Brimmer, 1954) or disappointingly shallow (R. S. Rungta, 1970, ch. 12). Two more recent articles—both characterised by an attempt to use primary evidence—are more promising viz. Papendieck, H., ‘Some Problems of Quantification in Indian Business History’, Bulletin of Quantitative Methods in South Asian Studies, no. 1, 06 1973Google Scholar, and Tomlinson, B. R., ‘Colonial Firms and the Decline of Colonialism in Eastern India 1914–47’, Modern Asian Studies 15 (3) 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but still barely scratch the surface.

³⁸ Most work has been done on the Bombay jobber, cf. M. D. Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force; Mazumdar, D., ‘Labour Supply in Early Industrialization: The Case of the Bombay Textile Industry’, Economic History Review, 24 (3) 1973Google Scholar; and Newman, R. K., ‘Social Factors in the Recruitment of the Bombay Millhands’ in Chaudhury, K. N. and Dewey, C. (eds), Economy and Society. Essays in Indian Economic and Social History (New Delhi, 1979)Google Scholar, and his Workers and Unions in Bombay 1918–24: A Study of Organisation in the Cotton Mills (Canberra, 1981).Google Scholar

³⁹ Clive Dewey's two illuminating essays on the subject, ‘The Eclipse of the Lancashire Lobby and the Concessions of Fiscal Autonomy to India’ in Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A. G. (eds), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London, 1978)Google Scholar, and ‘The Government of India's “New Industrial Policy”, 1900–1925: Formation and Failure’, in Chaudhury and Dewey, Economy and Society are in the same tradition as the earlier work by Arthur Silver, Peter Harnetty, Ian Drummond and S. K. Sen.

⁴⁰ Paradoxically, although few economic historians of modern India have seemed interested in delving into technology and the choice of technique, the subject appears to be attracting the attention of the pre-British and especially the Mughal specialists (see Currie, K., ‘The Development of Petty Commodity Production in Mughal India’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 14 (1) 1982Google Scholar, and especially Habib, I., ‘Technology and Barriers to Social Change in Mughal India’, Indian Historical Review, V, nos 1–2, 07 1978–Jan. 1979Google Scholar). Apart from the usual disclaimer of lack of information about the ‘unorganized’ sector, the main reason for this neglect seems to be related to the ‘borrowed’ nature of technology prior to the second world war.

⁴¹ Bagchi, Private Investment in India, is one of the few economic historians who has consciously tried to set his study of modern industries within a theoretical framework (Pt 1, Introduction and Appendix). Although we may argue about the utility of this framework and wonder how it relates to his more recent work, it is the very existence of such an approach which I am concerned with here.

⁴² In this category I would be inclined to take as my examples B. Davey, A. G. Frank and A. Sen (Radicals), and the forays by D. Lal and Ian Little (in the neo-Classical vein)—none of whom, of course, would attempt to posture as ‘main-line’ historians.

⁴³ Cf. the work of K. N. Chaudhuri and B. M. McAlpin (in the quantitative, neo-Classical tradition), and A. K. Bagchi, H. Alavi and the recent studies of Chandra, B. (‘Capitalism, Stages of Colonialism and the Colonial State’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 10 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Karl Marx, His Theories of Asian Societies and Colonial Rule’, Review V (1) 1981Google Scholar) in the Marxist tradition.

⁴⁴ See Fogel, R. W. and Elton, G. R., Which Road to the Past?: Two Views of History (Yale, 1983)Google Scholar for a popular outline; and for a more formal statement of different methodological—and indeed philosophical traditions—see the contributions of McCloskey, D., Forster, R. and Resnick, S. in the Journal of Economic History 38 (1) 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the essays by North, D., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, and his ‘The Theoretical Tools of the Economic Historian’, in Kindleberger, C. P. and Tella, G. di (eds), Economics in the Long View: Essays in Honour of W. W. Rostow (London, 1982) vol. 1, Ch. 2.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For both Marxists (Bagchi, Private Investment in India, chs 3 and 4) and non-Marxists (see Kindleberger and di Tella (eds), Economies in the Long View, esp. vol. 1) alike. The virtues of comparative work on industrialization may be appreciated from such widely different source and area references as Tomlinson's, B. R. ‘Writing History Sideways: Lessons for Indian Economic Historians from Meji Japan’Google Scholar published here; Kigokawa, Y., ‘Technical Adaptations and Managerial Resources in India: A Study of the experience of the Cotton Textile Industry from a Comparative Viewpoint’, The Developing Economies XX (2) 1983Google Scholar; and Kirkpatrick, C. H., Lee, N. and Nixson, F., Industrial Structure and Policy in Less Developed Countries (London, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Reynolds, L. G.'s rather typical comment that colonial India was ‘rather a special case’ (see fn. 7), p. 956.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Comparative Studies in Society and History.

⁴⁸ Dewey and Hopkins (eds), The Imperial Impact.

⁴⁹ See for example Kemp, Industrialization in the Non-Western World, and the particularly annoying article by Swamy, S., ‘The Response to Economic Challenge: A Comparative Economic History of China and India, 1870–1952’, Quarterly Journal of Economics XLIII (1) 1979.Google Scholar Curiously enough, the more general and ambitious the work the more suggestively fertile it seems to be, cf. Anderson, P., Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1975)Google Scholar, Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (London, 1967)Google Scholar, and Jones, E. L., The European Miracle (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ All of the surveys cited below cover a much broader spectrum than industrialization, of course, cf. V. V. Bhat, ‘A Century and a Half of Economic Stagnation in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 15 July 1963; Maddison, A., Class Structure, and ‘The Historical Origins of Indian Poverty’, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro 23 (92) 03 1980Google Scholar; Kumar, D., ‘The Economy Under the Raj’, South Asian Review 3 (4) 1970Google Scholar, and her ‘Recent Research in the Economic History of Modern India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 9 (1) 1972Google Scholar; Bhagwati, J. D. and Desai, P., India: Planning for Industrialisation (Oxford, 1970), ch. 1Google Scholar; Macpherson, W. J., ‘Economic Development in India Under the British Crown’, in Youngson, A. J. (ed.), Economic Development in the Long Run (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Stokes, E., ‘The First Century of British Colonial Rule in India: Social Revolution or Social Stagnation?’ Past and Present 58, 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bayly, C. A., ‘English Language Historiography on British Expansion in India and Indian Reactions since 1945’, in Wesseling, H. L. and Emer, P. C. (eds), Reappraisals in Overseas History (Leiden, 1979)Google Scholar; P. Robb ‘British Rule’, and N. Charlesworth, British Rule.

⁵¹ Allen, G. C., ‘The Industrialisation of the Far East’, in Habakkuk, H. J. and Postan, M. M. (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. VI The Industrial Revolutions and After (Cambridge, 1965), pt II, ch. 10, section III, pp. 908–19.Google Scholar

⁵² Even the obvious ‘front line’ industries like cotton, jute, metals, paper, tea and sugar steadfastly resist the beckoning finger.

⁵³ Although to my mind it is somewhat surprising that A. K. Bagchi was not involved with any aspect of the work; after all, his own connections with Cambridge and the C.U.P. seem particularly strong.

⁵⁴ Morris, M. D., ‘Introduction to the Symposium’, Explorations in Economic History 12, 1975, Pp. 253–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ Morris, M. D., Measuring the Conditions of the World's Poor (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Especially his extended review of Bagchi's, A. K. 1972 book, ‘Private Industrial Investment on the Indian Subcontinent 1900–1939: Some Methodological Considerations’ Modern Asian Studies, 8 (4) 1974, pp. 535–76.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ C.E.H.I. p. xvii.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ It is interesting to note that the Editors also mention, albeit in passing, that the work on India (presumably including the volume under discussion) has much to contribute to the ‘current literature of underdevelopment’ and even ‘development policies’ (Preface p. xvii). Now although this is a refreshing departure from traditional economic history (and goes beyond the somewhat bland and more orthodox expectations contained in the editorial Prefaces of both Volumes 6 (1965) and 7 (1978) of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe), there is little evidence that any of the contributory authors have seen fit to cast their studies with this objective in view.

⁵⁹ Though Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai state that ‘some of the authors … undertook original work as part of their brief’, Preface p. xvii. These authors are not mentioned by name, but I do not think that Professor Morris was one of the more conspicuous examples.

⁶⁰ Book reviewers are unfortunately seldom allowed sufficient space to undertake such work—and this applies with particular force to massive compendiums such as the Cambridge volumes. Thus Premit Chaudhuri in his review (Economic Journal, 03 1984, p. 192Google Scholar) notes that ‘it is impossible, in a short review, to do justice to a major publication on a great theme …’. Since there is no obvious solution to this problem (we cannot expect an extended Floud and McCloskey-type series of reviews in the Western journals and the Chief Editor of vol. 2 is, of course, the Chief Editor of the I.E.S.H.R.), the Cambridge Conference was all the more important.

⁶¹ Preface p. xviii.

⁶² The same point has been made, albeit in a slightly different context, by R. S. Chandavarkar in his stimulating paper presented to the Conference, ‘Industrialization in India Before 1947: Conventional Approaches and Alternative Perspectives’, pp. 5ff.Google Scholar

⁶³ Lal, D., The Poverty of Development Economics.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Allen, G. C., ‘Industrialisation of the Far East’, p. 919.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ The dissenting voices would be led by Bill Warren, Imperialism.

⁶⁶ Such ‘causes’ are more akin to tautologies than a serious attempt at explanation. Let us briefly consider two industries I am most familiar with, textile machinery and coal. If we perceive the former as a surrogate for all capital goods, the absence of indigenous capacity prior to 1939 (discussed by Professor Morris in one footnote, p. 582) cannot be simply ascribed to a combination of the alleged frailty of inter-sectoral links and the availability of ‘cheap’ machinery imports from the U.K. The story is more complicated and we cannot omit the indirect influence of the imperial connection. Similarly, the assertion (it is nowhere quantified let alone rigorously argued) that fuel was ‘costly’ and ‘extremely expensive’ fails to incorporate any of the essential context. The crude pit-head price of Indian coal was probably the lowest in the world (thanks to the cheap labour systems of production in vogue in the major coalfields); if it was relatively expensive in Bombay City, transport costs were obviously of considerable significance, and clearly the level of freight charges was not entirely independent of Government! The location of industry and the growth of (thermal) power-stations were also hardly matters that lay beyond the reach of the Raj.

⁶⁷ If so, he is evidently not alone, since both the Editors and a clear majority of the remaining contributors to the Cambridge volume appear to take the view that the impact of imperial rule can somehow be side-stepped—perhaps even divorced—from the basic economic history of the subcontinent. Along with Professor I. Habib (‘Studying a Colonial Economy—Without Perceiving Colonialism’, paper presented to the Cambridge Conference) and others, I do not believe that this is a tenable procedure—however sophisticated this kind of thinking may be (obviously it is not simply a hostile reaction to Nationalist or Radical opinions). Moreover, apart from any intellectual misgivings, it surely has the unintended effect of removing one of the most compelling and all-embracing aspects of the entire historiography.