The Industrial History of Colonial India
India's stagnated industrial development during decades-long sustained economic growth under liberalizing economic policy has attracted attention from various circles. At the same time, scholars show that the trapped industrial growth of India dates back to the late 19th century, when India was still under colonial rule (Broadberry and Gupta 2010). Curiously enough, this stagnated industrial development in the colonial era occurred under liberalizing policy framework, which formed one of the salient pillars of British colonial policies on India.
Based on a statistical analysis of two leading industrial sectors of colonial India, a cotton textile industry and an iron and steel industry, my presentation will show that colonial India's stagnated industrial growth was caused by insufficient developments of institutional and organizational settings for capital and labour transactions, in addition to other causes such as British interest-centered liberalizing economic policies conducted in India. On the one hand, my presentation would encourage further research on formations of institutional and organizational settings for industrial development, which is one of the important research topics of business historians. On the other hand, the research results of this presentation would give a historian's insight into the current stagnated industrial development under liberalizing scheme.
