From time to time, various editors present tirades on the Talk:British Raj page about how Britain became a developed country only because it had India (or other colonies) to exploit. This view overlooks that fact that the British economy was already greatly expanding when it encountered India. Here, BTW, are the inventions and discoveries made in Britain during the years 1500 to 1750 before India became any significant part of the British economy. It was those innovations, accompanying the burgeoning mercantile capitalism in Europe, that created the economic and technological growth in Britain during those years.
How does one explain the technological and scientific advances in Britain during the years 1500 to 1750 and the almost total lack of any in India during the same period? (I do know about the Kerala School, which although remarkable, remained a largely solipsist effort, failing to link to technology in the same way that calculus in Europe did.) That was long before the East India Company became a political force on the subcontinent. The Indian "dark age" has more to do with internal political, economic, and cultural dynamics. India (like Egypt, Greece, Peru, Persia), although still a great power, and contemporaneously wealthy enough to leave behind the great Mughal monuments, was not a participant in the mercantile, scientific and technological revolutions that brought great growth to the British (and European) economy during the years 1500 to 1750, and this had consequences in later centuries (for both good and ill). That doesn't mean that colonialism and imperialism later didn't wreak any havoc on the colonized peoples, but that the picture is complex, and it is important not to simplify it. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 20:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
From time to time, various editors present tirades on the Talk:British Raj page about how Britain became a developed country only because it had India (or other colonies) to exploit. This view overlooks that fact that the British economy was already greatly expanding when it encountered India. Here, BTW, are the inventions and discoveries made in Britain during the years 1500 to 1750 before India became any significant part of the British economy. It was those innovations, accompanying the burgeoning mercantile capitalism in Europe, that created the economic and technological growth in Britain during those years.
How does one explain the technological and scientific advances in Britain during the years 1500 to 1750 and the almost total lack of any in India during the same period? (I do know about the Kerala School, which although remarkable, remained a largely solipsist effort, failing to link to technology in the same way that calculus in Europe did.) That was long before the East India Company became a political force on the subcontinent. The Indian "dark age" has more to do with internal political, economic, and cultural dynamics. India (like Egypt, Greece, Peru, Persia), although still a great power, and contemporaneously wealthy enough to leave behind the great Mughal monuments, was not a participant in the mercantile, scientific and technological revolutions that brought great growth to the British (and European) economy during the years 1500 to 1750, and this had consequences in later centuries (for both good and ill). That doesn't mean that colonialism and imperialism later didn't wreak any havoc on the colonized peoples, but that the picture is complex, and it is important not to simplify it. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 20:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)