Essay On Colonial India

In terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it is important to see that from the 15th to the early 19th century, India produced about 20% more than entire Western Europe. However, India, saw a substantial decrease in the GDP in the 18th century (as it had been colonized by then) and by 1913 it had been reduced to only about 20% of western Europe. And it was at its worst around the time Britain left and India gained Independence.

India was the largest economy in the world for almost a thousand years before the British colonized it and guzzled all its resources only to leave it after about 300 years while making it one of the poorest countries in the world.

Since we’ve seen how colonialism affected India as a colony in terms of GDP, it is also important that we see how colonialism affected the colonizers. In the 1500s the share of UK’s GDP of the world was a mere 1.1%, it started to get a little better around 1700s reaching 2.9% when the East India Company had started making a little money. It went to the level of 5.2% when the colonialism actually started to bear fruits and reached highest ever levels between 8% - 9% between 1870-1913 when the crown had taken over India and the “loot” of

The growth of per capita income in India during the colonial period (1820-1913) was very low, while Europe and countries like U.S. and Japan grew significantly faster. During the last phase of colonialism which proved to be brutal for India, per capita income declined to (negative) -0.22% (1913-1950). On the other hand, after gaining independence, per capita income in India reached and grew at 1.4% (1950-1973) which was almost 3 times faster than what it had attained during 1870-1913 under colonial rule. During 1973-2001, per capita income reached a level of 3.01% which was substantially higher than the U.S., U.K. & Japan and outstanding 7% during