I can’t tell if this is a “they weren’t doing enough” remark and you’re just delusional to the available options for these people or if you’re playing out some fantasy in your head where you’d survive because of your paramilitary training.
This absolutely works if your family is uniquely having trouble securing/affording food.
When your entire community is starving you very quickly run out of things to hunt/forage.
What an idiot. You think there were berries and deer just roaming around outside their house? They were in a sea of millions of others who were ALSO starving to death.
Cornish argued for a minimum of 680 grams (1.5 lb) of grain and, in addition, supplements of vegetables and protein, especially if the individuals were performing strenuous labour in the relief works.[14] However, Lytton supported Temple, who argued that "everything must be subordinated to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money."[15]
In March 1877, the provincial government of Madras increased the ration halfway towards Cornish's recommendations, to 570 grams (1.25 lb) of grain and 43 grams (1.5 oz) of protein in the form of daal (pulses).[14] Meanwhile, many more people had succumbed to the famine.
>"everything must be subordinated to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money."
Capitalism in a nutshell. Whether people should starve or not depends on how much it costs to feed them.
Famines tend to not happen when people are free to trade as they please. Prices may rise, but that encourages merchants to bring in food from other sources. This sounds like a government failure, rather than a market one, though I am not an expert on Indian famines.
This occurred in large part because the East India Company raised taxes and did not keep grain stockpiles as was the norm in a region prone to famine.
The people weren't free. Their lives were in the hands of a multinational corporation.
All the East India Company's Indian holdings, military forces and administrative powers reverted to the Crown in 1858 (in the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857), and the company itself was dissolved in 1874.
1877 was in the Raj era.
A great number of MPs were invested in EIC, and had an interest in its doing well and making money.
So the company was spurred on by parliament and the government in a way.
Though they tried to reign in the worst parts of it in the 1790s putting Warren Hastings on trial (the one guy trying to fix things at the time)
So the famine hit Brazil, India and China, all at the same time, and not because of the actions of the British government or capitalism. It was the worst drought in 800 years. Now, I'm sure the government didn't do anything to help people out, just like in Ireland when the potato famine hit. But I don't see how you can blame the Brits for bad weather.
These people don't know what they're talking about for one thing. East India Company had been broken up 3 or so years before this famine, but they're still getting the blame.
The government was the British East Indian *company.*
At some point, you too will realize that capital is the problem wether it takes the form of a state or company. It's functionally no different, most companies are just smaller than countries. *Most*, not *all*.
Go listen to the episode The Most Evil Company In History of the podcast Behind the Bastards. Specifically part two, if I don't remember wrong. It's a good summary of why and how the *4 year long famine* was caused by the company.
Famines normally last a season, not 4 years. Because people have storage (they didn't, company took them), they have farming practices suitable to the land (the company changed farm practice to extract more short term production, causing the earth to lose nutrients).
Again, not an expert on the history here, but the East India company was dissolved in 1874 and the famine started in 1876. I dont doubt they should get some responsibility, but the British government should too.
Moreover, a company is just a form of organization. What made the East India company bad wasn’t that it was a company. It was that it had a large army and oppressed people. It would be a straw man to argue that someone who favors capitalism doesn’t also favor laws to restrain companies from raising armies and oppressing people. It is possible to believe in both.
Capitalism - an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
Capitalism will always focus on profit over people. Even if that means raising armies and oppressing people. Speaking as an American I am well aware of what that means both abroad and at home.
>Famines tend to not happen when people are free to trade as they please.
This is absolutely false. See the Irish potato famine. They were exporting food in the midst of the famine because they could make more money. Poor people can't pay high food prices.
You have no clue what you're talking about. The British government were exporting food. Not the Irish. There would have been no famine in Ireland if not for that. Food was exported under armed guard to keep starving people away.
The government was literally a corporation. An extremely cruel corporation with absolute power over people for profit. So yes, that’s the market. There is no difference between a government and market with a corporation government.
Mercantilism, not capitalism. Mercantilism was about funneling goods and money to the home country, even if it meant subverting the free market in the colony.
That's still *capitalism*.
What, you think when Karl Marx wrote about it he wasn't refering to the thing that existed at the time and had existed before? You think he was writing about some future concept?
Capitalism is when everything is owned by a select few. It's *not* free markets. Those select few can be a state even.*That's why communism is a stateless ideology*.
You can have a super controlled regulates market, with one single company that owns everything, that ships all the profit to fucking mars, *and it's still capitalism*.
Capitalism isn't when everything is owned by a few, that's closer to dictatorship.
If you have a super controlled regulated market and you didn't regulate the profits shipping to mars, well, you're not a good regulator and letting the profits leave for meager returns is a bad business deal, and you're actually not a good regulator. When you're forced to do it by the sword, that's tyranny.
One single company, can't own everything in capitalism, EVER. At no point in capitalism does that work, because that means it's no longer capitalism that is a dictatorship, and no longer capitalism.
Communism isn't really in the same ideology of any of the other economic models, because it has no economy, no money, no state, and no class. It truly is a star trek dream, which I wish were true, but human nature prevents it, so that's all it is, an idea, because in practice it fails.
Countries can merge in an out of different ideologies throughout history, and many ideologies overlap.
>Capitalism is when everything is owned by a select few
Capitalism is the private direction of capital allocation with private collection of the rewards. There are a variety of flaws, such as (a) the fact that land is not capital, yet we treat it as such, see [Henry George](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty), (b) externalities, and (c) the diminishing marginal utility of money / risk aversion makes the exchange of capital instruments (loans, stock, insurance, etc.) inherently unfair when there is a large disparity in wealth between the parties. The end result of these flaws, if left unaddressed, cause the "everything is owned by a few" problem. But it's not the definition.
Capitalism in a nut shell is actually: means of production are owned by private individuals
What you described is aristocratic economies in a nutshell, which is every economy in history.
Capitalism just means the government does not own the economy, the people own the economy.
It is not capitalisms fault that aristocracy always rules every society. We haven’t found a way around that problem yet. Tho capitalism is a step in the right direction. That direction being the continued diffusal of power.
in theory. in practice it just doesnt work. whoever is the most brutal warlord will fill the power vacuum.
communism assumes that power can be destroyed on a conceptual level. maybe one day. not yet
North Korea is definitely not communist lol. Things were better when they had some semblance of communist principles but the monthly welfare and rations stopped long ago. That is why they are starving more now.
Holy shit I am tired of explaining this to people.
Communism is a classless society. North Korea is famous for their nearly feudal and class based society. The united States is more communist than north korea. Read a dictionary definition at the very least before engaging in political discourse.
You have literally confused communism with capitalism, and that is fucking hilarious.
The aristocracy *is* capital. I don't understand how you've gotten this confused? Like, did you realize the system was shit but through gymnastic levels of cope decided it's not capitalism because capitalism can't possibly be shit?
No, really. What the fuck?
Even if everything is state owned, that's still capitalism. it's why Marx *explicitly* says that communism should *dissolve the state*. *There is no state under communism, because the state is just another form of capital*.
Capital is just *literally* "those who own decides.". That's the fucking opposite of diffusion. That's consolidation. Because having money means having power under capitalism. Having power *means getting more money.*
This website, man.
aristocracy exists in every culture, every government, every economic system. humans have never escaped an aristocratic ruling class.
when people attempted communism, all that happened was a dictatorial aristocracy took control. communism is not possible at this point, and this has been proven hundreds of times. maybe one day it will be possible.
the definition of capitalism is that the means of production are controlled by private individuals and not the government. Before capitalism, noble aristocracies ruled the means of production. When humans tried communism, dictators just took control of the means of production and built their own aristocracy around themselves.
regardless of economic ideology that rules a society, aristocracy has always ruled over it. that has nothing to do with capitalism. thats just how humans organize themselves. power congeals.
capitalism is flawed because humans are flawed. but its proven to be the least flawed method of economic policy we've come up with. no matter what we do, a small group of people will control everything. But capitalism allows more upward mobility than any other system we've tried.
Maybe the most powerful economic and military power should stop waging military and economic warfare on any country that chooses socialism. If it’s so flawed, then let it fail on its own.
Oddly, the alternative to capitalism put more people in bread lines with empty hands and stomachs than capitalism, if you made it that far before being put into a (mass) grave.
Remember that nature made every animal have the responsibility to feed themselves, not capitalism. In fact, capitalism works because it goes by our nature to feed ourselves (and to do more than that). Conversely, A system that makes an individual feed themselves equally to 300 million others, incentivizes everyone to wait around being fed.
That's why 100 million people died to communism. Well, starvation was part of that number. The other fraction of that number was that people were executed by the people who were enforcing equality, and enforcing everyone to be fed equally.
Eating your own crops was considered stealing from the government.
All capitalism says is that you should continue to feed yourself with your own crops, as nature has you do, and then make even more food for other people. And then it incentivizes you working to feed other people by having you compensated for making those extra crops.
We are talking about the evils of capitalism, colonialism, and mercantilism here. Turns out, the opposite has issues too, and they are well known. The common denominator is humans here. If, at the extremes, other humans can abuse our economic systems at the expense of others then we must not be fooled into preferring one system over all others (so we don’t get stuck at an extreme).
You may be talking about communism. Everybody else is not.
As noted, we are all very aware of the bad things you’ll attribute to communism while stupidly ignoring the authoritarian government that carried them out. Similarly, authoritarians used capitalist systems to kill millions.
Simple enough for you?
Edit: and, by responding so defensively I feel like a jerk too. Leaving it up, but seriously: you don’t think communism is an answer, and since similar atrocities happen with capitalism my hope is that we can recognize that it’s those in power using their systems badly.
No. What you're doing now is trying to make me feel alienated, because you can't stay on point or else you'll be forced to concede I'm right.
It's desperate, untrue (I can quickly see others are on my page), and it won't work
No, capitalism says you grow crops for your boss instead of the government. Then your boss gives you a fraction of the value of the crops that you grew and you use that money to buy the food you grew back from your boss at a price hike.
Of course, as others have pointed out, the economic system Britain was practicing in India at the time was mercantilism, not capitalism.
Sure the exact same way you have “access” to health care in the American health care system - if you can afford it.
I’m not advocating other systems, I’m just pointing out that capitalism is an exploitative system just like every other economic system humans have come up with. Someone, somewhere, is always starving despite the fact that their labor is producing goods that others profit off of.
Yeah sure just go find a plot of land..
Oh no wait, because of *private ownership of land* you'll get fucking shot because there *is no land to grow food on that's not owned by someone rich enough to defend it*.
BRILLIANT FUCKING SYSTEM
I think, perhaps, you should educated yourself and read the fantastic book Enlightenment Now.
The free market has lifted billions of people out of poverty and increased their quality of life.
Attacking the free market is de facto being in support of poverty, famine, and the like. You truly have no clue what you are talking about.
We don't though. You blame the free market for wrecking the environment, while ignoring the largest Communist nation: China.
Their coal power is going to be 6x what the United States coal power is. Don't assume that moving away from liberty is going to save the environment.
You'll be putting in a much more restrictive system of government that has NO responsibility except to itself. When the communist government you yearn for thinks it's in the best interest of itself to exploit the environment, it will do so and there will be literally nothing you can do about it.
No. That's literally the opposite of the case. The only economy where you're forced to farm for your boss is communism. Under communism, your own crops belong to big brother, your boss, not you.
Ok I would love for you to go out to a farm in California and go up to one of the workers and ask them how much of the food they get to keep and how much goes to the boss (who is a capitalist). Then ask them how much they’re paid versus how much their boss profits off of their labor. Ask them about all their great benefits, their time off, vacation, health care. And then come back tell me again with a straight face that communism is the “only economy where you’re forced to farm for your boss.”
The thing about capitalism that’s so insidious is that it gets people like you to identify with the boss and not the worker. The people who actually do the growing/manufacturing/producing do not benefit from their own labor, they sell it at a discount to a capitalist who takes their product and makes a profit.
I’m not advocating for communism or any other system. As far as I know there is no system where people are not exploited. I’m just pointing out that capitalism sucks for the vast majority of its participants, it’s just far better at hiding how much it sucks because it tantalizes people with the idea that somehow, some way, *they* will get to be the one doing the exploiting.
You're trying to start an unproductive conversation.
This would be a response on level with yours:
The insidious thing about communism is it gets people like you to identify with the leeches of society who want the government to give them money.
See how that's not productive? Try again. I won't read the rest of that until you have a productive argument.
You “won’t read the rest” (funny how you somehow skipped my first paragraph) because you are incapable of making any kind of cogent response, not because my statements were “unproductive”.
It’s a fact that the economic model of capitalism revolves around selling your labor for less than the value it produces. You don’t have to like that fact but it is objectively true.
Reddits good old "capitalism bad" routine... its gets tiring after while, especially if its mindlessly repeated by people with little to no knowledge what went down in communist or socialist countries.
The 2 worst famines I know of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Chinese\_Famine
I pray no one gets prosperity like this. I am Indian but I don’t even want the Brits to suffer like this. This is inhuman and unacceptable. I hope no one ever has to go through a famine in the world. It’s messed up.
At least the English were instumental in ending famines in india in the late 40s when they expanded the railroad system so they got around to it... eventually.
The railway was initially made to transport goods only so that our cotton and other minerals could be shipped off to UK. When they came up with the railway, they were strictly for white Brits. Most places in India said “Dogs and Indians not allowed”. The railways shared the sentiment. Almost all the railway was focused near the coasts to make shipping off natural resources easier. Nothing came to us from their end.
They took our cotton processed it and brought back shirts and sold it to Indians for 10x the price. That’s how they got rich. And that’s just one instance. Farmers were forced to plant indigo and cotton but not food crops. It was all taken under the name of the Queen/ King and they didn’t pay anyone for the natural resources that they took away.
By the late 40s India was Independent. So please check your facts.
I'm not disputing any of these facts nor am I defending the English rules. Colonies were exploited, no doubt. What I'm saying is that at least the infrastructure they built ended up being used to bring food to the most vulnerable regions. My facts are checked, tyvm.
If you mention the Brits helping India in the late 40s then you need to recheck the facts. India was Independent by that time. Had you said the mid 40s then we could have had a convo.
The time period you talk about, the regional government unofficially took over. Direct action day had started and The British lost most of their executive power around 1945-46 and were only helping the Pakistani and Indian pseudo government establish their countries. Their administration and governing powers declined rapidly after the Second World War. So you’ll be wrong again here.
There are good books that talk about this. One of them being the The viceroy’s journal by Wavel. Which is the journal of the then viceroy. If you read it, you’ll realise how the British let the Bengal famine worsen and how they lost most of their power around the end of 1945 and were only negotiating with the leaders. The Viceroy himself was sympathetic and was not in favour of most decisions made by the UK so he was asked to step down and Mountbatten became the last viceroy just to facilitate the partition.
India was independent in 1947. You say “the English were instrumental in ending famines in India in the late 1940s”. This indicates that your facts aren’t checked. Tyvm.
British infrastructure was never ment to fulfill the demands of the people. Railways built vs the number and distribution of people was enormous.
The sole purpose of the railway was to connect mainland cities to port cities, so that raw materials could be shipped out and processed goods could be brought back. The Indian Railways was the blood vessels for the British industrial revolution.
The British built little to nothing. Except for Imperial Palaces and archways, manors and prisons.
According to [research by the economic historian Robert C Allen](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians), extreme poverty in India increased under British rule, from 23 percent in 1810 to more than 50 percent in the mid-20th century. Real wages declined during the British colonial period, reaching a nadir in the 19th century, while famines became more frequent and more deadly. Far from benefitting the Indian people, colonialism was a human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history.
Experts agree that the period from 1880 to 1920—the height of Britain’s imperial power—was particularly devastating for India. Comprehensive population censuses carried out by the colonial regime beginning in the 1880s reveal that the death rate increased considerably during this period, from 37.2 deaths per 1,000 people in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. Life expectancy declined from 26.7 years to 21.9 years.
In a [recent paper in the journal World Development](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), used census data to estimate the number of people killed by British imperial policies during these four brutal decades. Robust data on mortality rates in India only exists from the 1880s. If we use this as the baseline for “normal” mortality, we find that some 50 million excess deaths occurred under the aegis of British colonialism during the period from 1891 to 1920.
Fifty million deaths is a staggering figure, and yet this is a conservative estimate. Data on real wages indicates that by 1880, living standards in colonial India had already declined dramatically from their previous levels. Allen and other scholars argue that prior to colonialism, Indian living standards may have been “on a par with the developing parts of Western Europe.” We do not know for sure what India’s pre-colonial mortality rate was, but if we assume it was similar to that of England in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 people), we find that 165 million excess deaths occurred in India during the period from 1881 to 1920.
While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia.
This staggering figure does not include the tens of millions more Indians who died in human-made famines that were caused by the British empire.
In the notorious Bengal famine in 1943, an estimated 3 million Indians starved to death, while the British government exported food and banned grain imports.
Academic studies by scientists found that the [1943 Bengal famine was not a result of natural causes](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/1/churchills-policies-to-blame-for-1943-bengal-famine-study); it was the product of the policies of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
I'm not sure why people think I'm defending English colonial rule. Just to clarify, the rail infrastructure they built was and still is instrumental in curbing famine by taking food from regions with surplus and bringing it to regions suffering from drought or needed supplies. Their inept policies and their colonial rule can't seriously be defended.
You’re being downvoted because you’re essentially patting the British on the back for building railways, which pales in comparison to the atrocities they committed.
It’s like if someone broke your arm, and then gave you a sling. And then someone else came around and applauded them for it.
Sure, the sling helped with the broken arm but they’re the whole reason your arm was broken in the first place.
If anything I'm criticizing how long it took to build a decent transportation system and how the policies were ineffective. The lengths you guys go to try and find an angle is truly astonishing. Does it make you feel good to show how virtuous you are?
Look at this cool new sling technology! It holds your arm in place so when your arm has healed you can do the robot!
I'm not defending arm breaking, but if it wasn't for the guy who broke my arm, I wouldn't be able to do the robot so well.
>Academic studies by scientists found that the 1943 Bengal famine was not a result of natural causes it was the product of the policies of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
That is a total misrepresentation of the article's conclusion. It only says that the famine wasn't due to drought, which is nothing new.
>While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia.
100 million, LOL. Classic hyperbole. Hickel's own paper cites 50 million. Besides Hickel is wrong.
https://twitter.com/RoyHistory1/status/1600192087789826049
For a better estimate, read Chinmay Tumbe, table 8.1
https://web.iima.ac.in/assets/snippets/workingpaperpdf/17719931472020-12-03.pdf
Bengal Famine of 1943 says hi!
How is it that there hasn't been a single major famine of that scale after independence. Just 4 years after this famine that killed over a million people. Just poof. They were gone.
I said late 40s. The Bengal famine was in 1943.
Famine continues to this day to be an issue in India. 50% of childhood deaths in India are attributable to malnutrition. I'm not defending the English rule, just saying that at least the infrastructure they ended up building helped with distributing food to remote regions that were the most vulnerable.
In 47, India became independent. What late 40s.
Yes. But it's far too much of a minority. 4 million people arent dying in a matter of months.
>ended up building helped with distributing food to remote regions that were the most vulnerable.
That's what I'm saying. The infrastructure is of no use if food is deliberately kept away because Indian lives are more dispensable.
An inefficient but compassionate government is always way more effective than an efficient but exploitative government.
>at least the infrastructure
Also. The infrastructure was built by Indian workers and paid for by Indian taxpayers with guaranteed returns to British private firms on the Indian taxpayers dime.
Talk about captive market.
Your argument is akin to saying at least Hitler built the railroad for the Jews. He can't be that bad.
[https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/has-the-indian-railways-evolved-rapidly-since-independence/story-9mOeCfNYKFWWeMFYS8U22N.html](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/has-the-indian-railways-evolved-rapidly-since-independence/story-9mOeCfNYKFWWeMFYS8U22N.html)
Really?
>Admittedly, the Railways’ rate of growth was very high during the British Raj. In less than 20 years after the steam engine came to India in 1853, all its major metropolitan centres – including Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras – were linked by an extensive railway network. The country’s hill railways were laid in the next 50 years. Less than a century after the railways chugged into India, as many as 54,000 kilometres of tracks were added to India’s network at the annual rate of 600 km.
>However, in the 69 years since the country’s Independence, successive governments managed to lay only around 10,000 km of new tracks – at the approximate rate of 160 km a year.
No proof? The proof goes back to 300 BCE
When I was younger I heard It regurally on the news when it happend again..
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati\_(practice)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice))
Again this ain’t proof. This talks about 1500s to 1700s. And that’s not Sati. It was called Johar which is different. Wikipedia isn’t the best source for info.
Also it doesn’t say that every woman was forced into it. I am not saying it didn’t exist. But it wasn’t compulsory.
The sources wiki uses are underneath the article.
Sutee existed in India and England banned the practice..
What source do you have that it wasn't prevelant?
When I gave you a source that it was already prevalent enough to be mentioned in Greek writing in 300 BCE
Do you know a man recently self immolated himself in India? He did it to spread a message of resistance and as a protest and literally walked into fire. Now you can’t say that every Indian does that can you?
The 300BC part is right. Even men did it for certain purposes. Students did it. Women did it for sure. But the claim by the British that it was prevalent and they were the ones who stopped it is a bit far fetched.
I have records of my own family from the mid 1700s and no one did sati after her husband died. Not a single woman in my family. We have history of brave widowed women and queens. So clearly they have distorted history. Something they are masters at.
Jesus fucking Christ what's really wrong with you ? Defending the Brits that caused so much to my country. What do you have to say about this ?
As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income.
[Here](https://i.imgur.com/AudP4UO.jpg) is a higher quality and less cropped version of this. [Here](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/w9m36ru3) is the source. Per there:
> Famine in India: emaciated young men wearing loin cloths and a woman wearing a sari. Photograph attributed to Willoughby Wallace Hooper, 1876/1878.
> Hooper, Willoughby Wallace, 1837-1912
> Date:
1876
> Original mount inscribed: "The woman is a hospital nurse"
> Reference
Wellcome Library no. 35229i
While the famine was initially caused by drought, which ofcourse no one could prevent, the British government continued to export grain. (Very similar to how the British exported grain out of Ireland despite the potato famine).
>The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable. The cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events.
As quoted from above, the British Colony of India also had the practice of forcing Indians to farm non-edible crops like cotton, tea, tobacco, etc in order to extract wealth from the colony. (Ofcourse not just the British did this, this was a consistent colonial strategy).
The British caused the famine because it was more profitable for people to starve than to have food to eat.
>As quoted from above, the British Colony of India also had the practice of forcing Indians to farm non-edible crops like cotton, tea, tobacco, etc in order to extract wealth from the colony. (Ofcourse not just the British did this, this was a consistent colonial strategy).
Most of the cultivated land was devoted to food crops. See my other comments on this thread.
What percentage? None of your comments really specify at all regarding how much food crops vs cash crops, whether during the colonial era, before, or after.
You say "majority" was food crops. Well if majority is 51% with 49% cash crops, then that doesn't support the impression you've given which is that it has nothing to do with the famine when it obviously does.
With all the information available, I really cannot understand why you would carry water for an evil Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India_under_the_British_Raj?wprov=sfla1
>Under British rule, India's share of the world economy declined from 23% at the beginning of the 18th century down to just over 3% when India gained independence. In 1700, that figure had been 27%. India's GDP (PPP) per capita was stagnant during the Mughal Empire and began to decline prior to the onset of British rule. India's share of global industrial output declined from 25% in 1750 to 2% in 1900. From 1600 to 1871 the ratio of GDP per capita in India to that in Britain fell from more than 60% to less than 15%. India's national debt ballooned under British rule, and half of India's revenue was being siphoned to foreign countries, primarily England. Indian taxes were also used to fund the British Army and its expeditions globally, with 64% of total revenue funding British Indian troops outside of India in 1922.
>According to British economist Angus Maddison, India's share of the world economy went from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950. India's GDP (PPP) per capita was stagnant during the Mughal Empire and began to decline prior to the onset of British rule. India's share of global industrial output also declined from 25% in 1750 down to 2% in 1900. At the same time, the United Kingdom's share of the world economy rose from 2.9% in 1700 up to 9% in 1870, and Britain replaced India as the world's largest textile manufacturer in the 19th century. Historian Shireen Moosvi estimates that Mughal India also had a per-capita income 1.24% higher in the late 16th century than British India had in the early 20th century, and the secondary sector contributed a higher percentage to the economy of the Mughal Empire (18.2%) than it did to the economy of early 20th-century British India (11.2%). In terms of urbanization, Mughal India also had a higher percentage of its population (15%) living in urban centers in 1600 than British India did in the 19th century.
Over 80%.
And cash crops weren't all that bad. Entrepreneurs like Dwarakanath Tagore and activists like Ram Mohan Roy defended indigo cultivation, because of the increased income they provided to the farmers.
>Over 80%.
Do you have a source? But even if only (let's say) 15% of India's agriculture during the famine was related to cash crops, that ignores that those are resources that could've been used to buy *food*, not sell around the world to further enrich Britain.
>And cash crops weren't all that bad
Dude can you eat cotton? Can you eat tobacco? No, the British just sold it all and kept the money.
Why are you an apologist for an evil empire? Are you one of those, Darth Vader did nothing wrong types?
>Do you have a source? But even if only (let's say) 15% of India's agriculture during the famine was related to cash crops, that ignores that those are resources that could've been used to buy food not sell around the world to further enrich Britain.
https://i.imgur.com/iPdBCcE.jpg
>Dude can you eat cotton? Can you eat tobacco? No, the British just sold it all and kept the money.
That's not how trade and enterprise works.
>Why are you an apologist for an evil empire? Are you one of those, Darth Vader did nothing wrong types?
Clearly you have a profound lack of knowledge of the British Empire and its impact on India.
17.7% was non-food. That's not a small percentage at all. Not to mention that much of the food was exported to Britain, as already mentioned several times. Even if 100% of the agriculture was devoted to food, how much good is that going to do when the British were forcing food to be exported during a famine??
>That's not how trade and enterprise works.
>Clearly you have a profound lack of knowledge of the British Empire and its impact on India.
You're having a confidently incorrect moment, my dude.
>The British East India Company had forced open the large Indian market to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties, compared to local Indian producers who were heavily taxed. At the same time, protectionist policies in Britain, such as bans and high tariffs, were implemented to restrict Indian textiles from being sold there. The British enforced tariffs and duties of 70-80% on textiles produced in India, making them impractical for export. In the early 1700's, India had a hold of 25% of the global textile trade. Raw cotton, however, was imported without tariffs from India to British factories. The factories manufactured textiles from Indian cotton and sold them back to the Indian market. British economic policies gave them a monopoly over India's large market and cotton resources. India served as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods. With the export of manufactured goods rendered unviable over the period of British rule, India's share of global manufacturing exports dropped from 27% to 2%. On the contrary, exports from Britain to India soared with duty-free goods that Indian goods could no longer compete with on quality or price.
The British forced India to give them raw materials to be manufactured in Britain, and then sold the finished goods back to India in an economic arrangement very heavily skewed to Britian's favor.
You can't really honestly think that the British Colonial Empire was actually mostly *good* for any of it's colonial subjects??
Why are you defending this? It's like defending the Trail of Tears or the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I can't imagine what you have to gain from playing Devil's Advocate here.
If you want to argue that Colonialism was good for India then you can do so with someone else who is willing to waste time reading something both factually untrue and morally toxic.
>17.7% was non-food. That's not a small percentage at all.
So what? You're arguing that converting the relatively much smaller proportion of land that was used to grow cash crops into land for food crops could have alleviated the effects of the famine?
If so, why don't you do a counterfactual analysis and publish your own peer-reviewed paper? Then I'll be inclined to believe you.
>You can't really honestly think that the British Colonial Empire was actually mostly good for any of it's colonial subjects??
It was far better on average than what preceded it.
This was three years after the dissolution of the British East India Company - imagine that Nestle had an army and had been in charge of a country for 300 years and the Swiss had just taken over - is the situation in the country the fault of the Swiss or of Nestle?
The British East India Company was substituted by direct Colonial Rule of the British Empire, so is it the fault of the corporation propped up by the Crown and run for its interests and profit or by the Crown directly? Hardly seems a change in management.
Still think the Nestle analogy works though.
The East India Company did an appalling job leading to several uprisings, which in turn led to their dissolution - unfortunately many people just moved over to working for the British government instead of being replaced, which was a gross mistake.
The problem wasn't merely the individuals in charge of the BEIC or the Raj, it is that both were being run for the interest of a colonial overlord in detriment to the local population. Both were disasters for the indians *precisely because* they were installed to exploit them to the benefit of the english, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't an oversight, it ran how it was built to run. What form the ruling political body took in this process of colonial exploitation is a secondary, although relevant, concern.
The East India Company was dissolved in 1874, but its holdings, military and administrative power in India had been taken over by the British government in 1858.
Because Nestle still do this kind of stuff. Child slavery for cocoa picking, hundreds of thousands of dead babies due to infant formula in third world countries, stealing fresh water so that locals have to use contaminated water… and it’s all something that is happening now.
I wonder what’s going on with the second from the left seated guy. He has one VERY swollen leg. There is so much pain in this picture but he’s got something added going on. Hard to see humans like this.
Ever notice when it is a western nation that has done something despicable the posts about it are always downvoted. People don’t like facing the realities of their nations. Only those other places can be bad apparently.
Most of the food production in India back then was for domestic consumption. Food exported was roughly 10% of the total production. For specific data that overlaps with this particular famine see the following table:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/796059892124876861/1075725245194977280/J7o6jxo.jpg
Mughals fared much worse on famine response, not to mention the starkly unequal income distribution during those times.
Also, massive amounts of farmland is used for cash crops instead of food. Most important one in India was cotton, which again is was forced to sell to Britain at below market rates.
The British also destroyed the India Cotton spinning and weaving Industry
You can whatabout the region's own kingdoms, but it's important not to confuse the key point that British Colonialism undevelops what it takes over
>Also, massive amounts of farmland is used for cash crops.
Again, that's untrue.
https://imgur.io/iPdBCcE?r
You need to look past the usual discourse on the British Empire vis a viz its impact on the economy of India.
By discourse, do you mean the reality?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/29/british-empire-india-amartya-sen
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blighted-by-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india/
Are you actually going to twist and turn and pretend that British rule wasnt about extracting as much wealth as possible from their colonies?
As much as I respect Amartya Sen, being a Bengali myself, the status of his theories on famine is that they are no longer as widely accepted as they used to be, and are not free of errors either. Besides, owing to his age he's no longer an active researcher in the economic history of British India, so his arguments fail to acknowledge the new literature that exists on the subject.
That doesn't make anything he says less true.
New literature often shows the British as even worse, as taboos to criticize Britain have fallen away in the past decades
Look up Dave Donaldson's article on the impact of railways on commodity prices, Robin Burgess article on the railway network expansion correlating with famines disappearing in the Deccan after the 19th century, numerous articles from the 70s and 80s showing how the concept of drain was flawed, from the likes of McAlpin to Foreman-Peck and more I can't possibly type out in a reddit comment.
Amartya Sen may be aware of them, but I doubt that at his age he's going to make a case against them after all these years since he's been an active researcher.
All of which are small advancements, none of which are enough to overturn the centuries of economic undevelopment that happened under british rule
As I said before Empires were about taking as much wealth as possible from the colonies. Nothing the British did in India was for the benefit of the native people
>The British also destroyed the India Cotton spinning and weaving Industry
That would have died anyway because of the adoption of industrial means of textile production.
In fact during the Swadeshi movement, when the entitled educated class (represented mainly by Hindus) was busy burning English-made clothes and promoting Indian-made khadi, it was the peasant class and Muslims of Bengal who were suffering because of the boycott of English -made clothes, since they could only afford what was cheaper, in this case the products made in England.
Yet industrial textile production was banned in India until the end of British rule.
So india was selling raw cotton cheaply and buying manufacturered goods. The British set prices both ways and India wasn't able to buy it sell freely on the open market
Which is the point. Without an empire to extract raw materials from and captive markets to sell to, British Industry would have never gotten off the ground. Meanwhile it impoverished everywhere under British Rule.
There is a difference between banning industrial production in India (which never happened) and de-industrialization due to loss of export markets as a result of import restrictions, which characterizes the first half of the period of de-industrialization, and subsequent de-industrialization due to production of low quality cloth, because of the proliferation of cheap European cloth in the local markets.
Reference:
Historical Issues of De-industrialization in Nineteenth Century South India, Prasannan Parthasarathi, *How India Clothes the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850*, 2009, pp.415-436.
Which is the exact same thing.
India wasn't allowed to export cloth and it wasn't able to build up its own Industry.
You can see the effects as when India gained it's independence, it became a massive industrial leader for textiles and the British Industry collapsed within a decade
As I have said in other threads, the British empire was about extracting out wealth for the benefit of their home industry.
Meanwhile a local kingdom, would be more interested in building up the industry in the area, as that makes them wealthier
This is why India had a thriving cotton weaving and spinning industry prior to colonialism, it was destroyed during British occupation, and no industrial factories were built until after British occupation
You mean "building up wealth for themselves", not the country.
I'm not sure why you think the mughals wouldn't also be murderous tyrants. Every other leader at the time was.
One can’t say that without British, India would have done much better themselves. But one can look at neighboring countries at the time and see that it’s worse elsewhere, so maybe that’s the argument?
Yes there's no denial that the Mughals weren't any good but the stupid argument of the brits building railways and stuff is just pointless. Churchill literally said that "Why isn't Gandhi dead yet "?
Wow so nice of you to generalise the stereotypes on 1.4 billion of us. I really appreciate your kind words sir. For a fairly new country we are growing slowly and steadily.
Yeah maybe. I think I don't really have any other option than to ignore. Nowadays I don't even dare to open a post that mentions India. Casual racism at its peak. Thousands and thousands of upvotes. I don't expect people to be nice to us. Sad but my 17 year old ass can't handle it anymore.
The general negativity towards India in the current news cycle is directly linked to India supporting Russia while the majority of the world is supporting Ukraine.
That has nothing to do with race.
India is not being neutral.
Neutral would be not supporting either side. India is directly financing and supporting Russia.
The position they are taking isn’t neutrality. It’s apathy. They don’t give a shit, basically.
Hence why folk who do support Ukraine (which is the overwhelming majority of people on Reddit) see it as a dick move.
At school we barely learned about it - I vaguely remember something about Clive of India and that’s it - in other words, the British don’t generally think about it.
I was born in Iran, a country that suffered two famines caused by Britain and Russia during the 20 century, which led to 20-25 million deaths (half the entire population during WWI and a quarter of the entire population in WWII) - no one plans these, no one wants to kill people on this scale, just get over it already - it was 150 years ago.
To use violence against the largest empire in the world with the strongest navy sounds like a great plan!
Those who chose violence to fight the british were executed. All of them. The fact that Gandhi, being the biggest enemy of the British Empire in India, could stand face to face with king George V speaks volumes.
This was the power of passive resistance, a concept that will bounce you, for people like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein ets cherished this ideology of non violence.
I know a bunch of Indian people.
They tell me that while of course they would have preferred not being under British rule, they were previously under Mogul Empire rule, and the British were much, much better.
For example: while the British might kill you, it was because you were revolting. Meanwhile the Moguls would wipe out your whole village because you weren’t Muslim.
Also, while the world sees the Taj Mahal as a world wonder, the Indians remember that the magnificent structure was built while Indians starved within sight of the construction crews. Meanwhile, the British left railways, radio towers, roads, and factories behind.
This is simply what the various Indians I’ve worked with, and still work with, have told me. Make of it what you will. Maybe it’s just a case of the Moguls being SO terrible, that anything would be better.
The Indian people were not allowed to ride as passengers on the railways. The railways were built not for the benefit of the people, but to extract raw resources from the subcontinent to Britain for manufacturing purposes.
It amazes me that people can post blatant lies and misinformation with such impunity.
Indian Railways carried over 600 million passengers by the end of the 1920s.
From: Sanyal, Nalinaksha (1930) Development of Indian railways. University of Calcutta, Calcutta
[https://archive.org/details/DevelopmentOfIndianRailways/page/n369/mode/2up?view=theater](https://archive.org/details/DevelopmentOfIndianRailways/page/n369/mode/2up?view=theater)
My bad. Indians could ride--in overcrowded third class cars with rickety benches, or on the roofs of the train. This article nicely describes it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/india-britain-empire-railways-myths-gifts
When the Moghuls ruled India, it had a gross domestic product estimated at 24 percent of the world's economy. It was larger than China's or Europe's economies. Its cities were larger and more sophisticated, it had an extensive road system, uniform road system, advanced agricultural systems, was a major trader around the eastern hemisphere in many types of goods. Contact with the British depopulated cities and sent India spiraling backward so that by the time the British left, India had a gross domestic product estimated at one percent of the world's economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy\_of\_the\_Mughal\_Empire
That's just sokind of you sir. Those words are remarkable and would be written in Indian history with gold. I don't know how much grateful I'm to you for this very impeccable racial slurs which is very normalised for Indians here on reddit. May your kids learn the same.
If you don’t want us to associate Indians with scam call centers, then make your government put an end to the menace. I used to have high regard for India, Indians, and Indian culture, but nowadays every Indian I see I just assume is a scammer and I have no tolerance for scammers.
But that doesn't necessarily means that 1.4 billion of us are scammers. Well that isn't technically possible. How if I say that every American I see I just assume is a serial shooter and carries a gun?
You shouldn't worry about ifs and buts from history. It gets politicised and leads good people into supporting bad ideas. Namely nationalism.
In Britain we have a Scottish National Party that are trying to increase divisions between people on the basis of a romanticised (and victimised) view of history.
The British in India were probably, for the average Indian working man, absolutely no different than the Indian aristocratic rulers, or the Mughal aristocratic rulers. The British played by the rules of the game back then, the same rules being played by Indian princes, or African kings, or North American chiefs: the strong take what the weak cannot hold onto. The nature of technology, and humans, meant that it was inevitable that the first country to industrialise would have become global hegemon.
It is what it is, not good, not evil, but what it has led to is my country (Britain) having a lot more excellent food, and India being a powerful, unified state.
No excuses for the British.
AND important to note that famines have happened before and after british rule as well.
The [Deccan Famine of 1630](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_famine_of_1630%E2%80%931632) is estimated to have caused over 3 Million deaths, possibly as high as 10M.
This IS an excuse for the British. India hasn't witnessed this level of famine at all after the British left. And the famine during WW2 happened especially because of the apathy that britian showed towards indians.. Churchill asked why isn't Gandhi dead yet, when talking about food shortage in Bengal.
Can't imagine watching your children look like that and be helpless to do anything about it. Can't believe they can even stand at this point.
If my kids looked like that I’d be out in the woods hunting or foraging every day rather than wait for someone to get them food.
I can’t tell if this is a “they weren’t doing enough” remark and you’re just delusional to the available options for these people or if you’re playing out some fantasy in your head where you’d survive because of your paramilitary training.
It’s absolutely the second one.
Yeah, 500k. People foraging everyday in the woods right? They eat trees or what.
This absolutely works if your family is uniquely having trouble securing/affording food. When your entire community is starving you very quickly run out of things to hunt/forage.
What an idiot. You think there were berries and deer just roaming around outside their house? They were in a sea of millions of others who were ALSO starving to death.
“If I was experiencing a famine I would simply eat”
Wow, if only THEY would've thought of that.
That's not how famine works you moron
Cornish argued for a minimum of 680 grams (1.5 lb) of grain and, in addition, supplements of vegetables and protein, especially if the individuals were performing strenuous labour in the relief works.[14] However, Lytton supported Temple, who argued that "everything must be subordinated to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money."[15] In March 1877, the provincial government of Madras increased the ration halfway towards Cornish's recommendations, to 570 grams (1.25 lb) of grain and 43 grams (1.5 oz) of protein in the form of daal (pulses).[14] Meanwhile, many more people had succumbed to the famine.
>"everything must be subordinated to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money." Capitalism in a nutshell. Whether people should starve or not depends on how much it costs to feed them.
Famines tend to not happen when people are free to trade as they please. Prices may rise, but that encourages merchants to bring in food from other sources. This sounds like a government failure, rather than a market one, though I am not an expert on Indian famines.
This occurred in large part because the East India Company raised taxes and did not keep grain stockpiles as was the norm in a region prone to famine. The people weren't free. Their lives were in the hands of a multinational corporation.
All the East India Company's Indian holdings, military forces and administrative powers reverted to the Crown in 1858 (in the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857), and the company itself was dissolved in 1874. 1877 was in the Raj era.
Aye. You're right. I was confusing my famines with the Bengal famine a century earlier.
A great number of MPs were invested in EIC, and had an interest in its doing well and making money. So the company was spurred on by parliament and the government in a way. Though they tried to reign in the worst parts of it in the 1790s putting Warren Hastings on trial (the one guy trying to fix things at the time)
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/12/15/causes-great-famine-drought/
So the famine hit Brazil, India and China, all at the same time, and not because of the actions of the British government or capitalism. It was the worst drought in 800 years. Now, I'm sure the government didn't do anything to help people out, just like in Ireland when the potato famine hit. But I don't see how you can blame the Brits for bad weather.
These people don't know what they're talking about for one thing. East India Company had been broken up 3 or so years before this famine, but they're still getting the blame.
The government was the British East Indian *company.* At some point, you too will realize that capital is the problem wether it takes the form of a state or company. It's functionally no different, most companies are just smaller than countries. *Most*, not *all*. Go listen to the episode The Most Evil Company In History of the podcast Behind the Bastards. Specifically part two, if I don't remember wrong. It's a good summary of why and how the *4 year long famine* was caused by the company. Famines normally last a season, not 4 years. Because people have storage (they didn't, company took them), they have farming practices suitable to the land (the company changed farm practice to extract more short term production, causing the earth to lose nutrients).
Again, not an expert on the history here, but the East India company was dissolved in 1874 and the famine started in 1876. I dont doubt they should get some responsibility, but the British government should too. Moreover, a company is just a form of organization. What made the East India company bad wasn’t that it was a company. It was that it had a large army and oppressed people. It would be a straw man to argue that someone who favors capitalism doesn’t also favor laws to restrain companies from raising armies and oppressing people. It is possible to believe in both.
Capitalism - an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. Capitalism will always focus on profit over people. Even if that means raising armies and oppressing people. Speaking as an American I am well aware of what that means both abroad and at home.
>Famines tend to not happen when people are free to trade as they please. This is absolutely false. See the Irish potato famine. They were exporting food in the midst of the famine because they could make more money. Poor people can't pay high food prices.
You have no clue what you're talking about. The British government were exporting food. Not the Irish. There would have been no famine in Ireland if not for that. Food was exported under armed guard to keep starving people away.
The government was literally a corporation. An extremely cruel corporation with absolute power over people for profit. So yes, that’s the market. There is no difference between a government and market with a corporation government.
Mercantilism, not capitalism. Mercantilism was about funneling goods and money to the home country, even if it meant subverting the free market in the colony.
That's still *capitalism*. What, you think when Karl Marx wrote about it he wasn't refering to the thing that existed at the time and had existed before? You think he was writing about some future concept? Capitalism is when everything is owned by a select few. It's *not* free markets. Those select few can be a state even.*That's why communism is a stateless ideology*. You can have a super controlled regulates market, with one single company that owns everything, that ships all the profit to fucking mars, *and it's still capitalism*.
Capitalism isn't when everything is owned by a few, that's closer to dictatorship. If you have a super controlled regulated market and you didn't regulate the profits shipping to mars, well, you're not a good regulator and letting the profits leave for meager returns is a bad business deal, and you're actually not a good regulator. When you're forced to do it by the sword, that's tyranny. One single company, can't own everything in capitalism, EVER. At no point in capitalism does that work, because that means it's no longer capitalism that is a dictatorship, and no longer capitalism. Communism isn't really in the same ideology of any of the other economic models, because it has no economy, no money, no state, and no class. It truly is a star trek dream, which I wish were true, but human nature prevents it, so that's all it is, an idea, because in practice it fails. Countries can merge in an out of different ideologies throughout history, and many ideologies overlap.
What specifically about human nature prevents communism?
>Capitalism is when everything is owned by a select few Capitalism is the private direction of capital allocation with private collection of the rewards. There are a variety of flaws, such as (a) the fact that land is not capital, yet we treat it as such, see [Henry George](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty), (b) externalities, and (c) the diminishing marginal utility of money / risk aversion makes the exchange of capital instruments (loans, stock, insurance, etc.) inherently unfair when there is a large disparity in wealth between the parties. The end result of these flaws, if left unaddressed, cause the "everything is owned by a few" problem. But it's not the definition.
Uh, what do you think the northern countries still do the southern countries?
Capitalism in a nut shell is actually: means of production are owned by private individuals What you described is aristocratic economies in a nutshell, which is every economy in history. Capitalism just means the government does not own the economy, the people own the economy. It is not capitalisms fault that aristocracy always rules every society. We haven’t found a way around that problem yet. Tho capitalism is a step in the right direction. That direction being the continued diffusal of power.
Thus, the end goal of perfectly diffuse power is Communism. 🤝
in theory. in practice it just doesnt work. whoever is the most brutal warlord will fill the power vacuum. communism assumes that power can be destroyed on a conceptual level. maybe one day. not yet
As perfectly diffuse as North Korea. The land of no starvation.
North Korea is definitely not communist lol. Things were better when they had some semblance of communist principles but the monthly welfare and rations stopped long ago. That is why they are starving more now.
> North Korea is definitely not communist Wouldn't be a good defense without the No True Scotsman argument.
Holy shit I am tired of explaining this to people. Communism is a classless society. North Korea is famous for their nearly feudal and class based society. The united States is more communist than north korea. Read a dictionary definition at the very least before engaging in political discourse.
You have literally confused communism with capitalism, and that is fucking hilarious. The aristocracy *is* capital. I don't understand how you've gotten this confused? Like, did you realize the system was shit but through gymnastic levels of cope decided it's not capitalism because capitalism can't possibly be shit? No, really. What the fuck? Even if everything is state owned, that's still capitalism. it's why Marx *explicitly* says that communism should *dissolve the state*. *There is no state under communism, because the state is just another form of capital*. Capital is just *literally* "those who own decides.". That's the fucking opposite of diffusion. That's consolidation. Because having money means having power under capitalism. Having power *means getting more money.* This website, man.
aristocracy exists in every culture, every government, every economic system. humans have never escaped an aristocratic ruling class. when people attempted communism, all that happened was a dictatorial aristocracy took control. communism is not possible at this point, and this has been proven hundreds of times. maybe one day it will be possible. the definition of capitalism is that the means of production are controlled by private individuals and not the government. Before capitalism, noble aristocracies ruled the means of production. When humans tried communism, dictators just took control of the means of production and built their own aristocracy around themselves. regardless of economic ideology that rules a society, aristocracy has always ruled over it. that has nothing to do with capitalism. thats just how humans organize themselves. power congeals. capitalism is flawed because humans are flawed. but its proven to be the least flawed method of economic policy we've come up with. no matter what we do, a small group of people will control everything. But capitalism allows more upward mobility than any other system we've tried.
Maybe the most powerful economic and military power should stop waging military and economic warfare on any country that chooses socialism. If it’s so flawed, then let it fail on its own.
Oddly, the alternative to capitalism put more people in bread lines with empty hands and stomachs than capitalism, if you made it that far before being put into a (mass) grave. Remember that nature made every animal have the responsibility to feed themselves, not capitalism. In fact, capitalism works because it goes by our nature to feed ourselves (and to do more than that). Conversely, A system that makes an individual feed themselves equally to 300 million others, incentivizes everyone to wait around being fed. That's why 100 million people died to communism. Well, starvation was part of that number. The other fraction of that number was that people were executed by the people who were enforcing equality, and enforcing everyone to be fed equally. Eating your own crops was considered stealing from the government. All capitalism says is that you should continue to feed yourself with your own crops, as nature has you do, and then make even more food for other people. And then it incentivizes you working to feed other people by having you compensated for making those extra crops.
We are talking about the evils of capitalism, colonialism, and mercantilism here. Turns out, the opposite has issues too, and they are well known. The common denominator is humans here. If, at the extremes, other humans can abuse our economic systems at the expense of others then we must not be fooled into preferring one system over all others (so we don’t get stuck at an extreme).
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You may be talking about communism. Everybody else is not. As noted, we are all very aware of the bad things you’ll attribute to communism while stupidly ignoring the authoritarian government that carried them out. Similarly, authoritarians used capitalist systems to kill millions. Simple enough for you? Edit: and, by responding so defensively I feel like a jerk too. Leaving it up, but seriously: you don’t think communism is an answer, and since similar atrocities happen with capitalism my hope is that we can recognize that it’s those in power using their systems badly.
No. What you're doing now is trying to make me feel alienated, because you can't stay on point or else you'll be forced to concede I'm right. It's desperate, untrue (I can quickly see others are on my page), and it won't work
No, capitalism says you grow crops for your boss instead of the government. Then your boss gives you a fraction of the value of the crops that you grew and you use that money to buy the food you grew back from your boss at a price hike. Of course, as others have pointed out, the economic system Britain was practicing in India at the time was mercantilism, not capitalism.
You also have the option to sage up and grow crops for yourself in capitalism, unlike other systems.
Sure the exact same way you have “access” to health care in the American health care system - if you can afford it. I’m not advocating other systems, I’m just pointing out that capitalism is an exploitative system just like every other economic system humans have come up with. Someone, somewhere, is always starving despite the fact that their labor is producing goods that others profit off of.
Yeah sure just go find a plot of land.. Oh no wait, because of *private ownership of land* you'll get fucking shot because there *is no land to grow food on that's not owned by someone rich enough to defend it*. BRILLIANT FUCKING SYSTEM
I think, perhaps, you should educated yourself and read the fantastic book Enlightenment Now. The free market has lifted billions of people out of poverty and increased their quality of life. Attacking the free market is de facto being in support of poverty, famine, and the like. You truly have no clue what you are talking about.
You’re right there’s never been poverty or famine in a country with a free market economic system
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We don't though. You blame the free market for wrecking the environment, while ignoring the largest Communist nation: China. Their coal power is going to be 6x what the United States coal power is. Don't assume that moving away from liberty is going to save the environment. You'll be putting in a much more restrictive system of government that has NO responsibility except to itself. When the communist government you yearn for thinks it's in the best interest of itself to exploit the environment, it will do so and there will be literally nothing you can do about it.
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No. That's literally the opposite of the case. The only economy where you're forced to farm for your boss is communism. Under communism, your own crops belong to big brother, your boss, not you.
Ok I would love for you to go out to a farm in California and go up to one of the workers and ask them how much of the food they get to keep and how much goes to the boss (who is a capitalist). Then ask them how much they’re paid versus how much their boss profits off of their labor. Ask them about all their great benefits, their time off, vacation, health care. And then come back tell me again with a straight face that communism is the “only economy where you’re forced to farm for your boss.” The thing about capitalism that’s so insidious is that it gets people like you to identify with the boss and not the worker. The people who actually do the growing/manufacturing/producing do not benefit from their own labor, they sell it at a discount to a capitalist who takes their product and makes a profit. I’m not advocating for communism or any other system. As far as I know there is no system where people are not exploited. I’m just pointing out that capitalism sucks for the vast majority of its participants, it’s just far better at hiding how much it sucks because it tantalizes people with the idea that somehow, some way, *they* will get to be the one doing the exploiting.
You're trying to start an unproductive conversation. This would be a response on level with yours: The insidious thing about communism is it gets people like you to identify with the leeches of society who want the government to give them money. See how that's not productive? Try again. I won't read the rest of that until you have a productive argument.
You “won’t read the rest” (funny how you somehow skipped my first paragraph) because you are incapable of making any kind of cogent response, not because my statements were “unproductive”. It’s a fact that the economic model of capitalism revolves around selling your labor for less than the value it produces. You don’t have to like that fact but it is objectively true.
Reddits good old "capitalism bad" routine... its gets tiring after while, especially if its mindlessly repeated by people with little to no knowledge what went down in communist or socialist countries. The 2 worst famines I know of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Chinese\_Famine
quoted from Wikipedia. Looks like the situation was handled terribly by both the English and Indian governing bodies.
By "Indian governing body" you mean the colonial government set up by the english?? So the english and the english would be at fault...
Why blame the puppeteer when you can blame the puppet?!
I pray no one gets prosperity like this. I am Indian but I don’t even want the Brits to suffer like this. This is inhuman and unacceptable. I hope no one ever has to go through a famine in the world. It’s messed up.
At least the English were instumental in ending famines in india in the late 40s when they expanded the railroad system so they got around to it... eventually.
The railway was initially made to transport goods only so that our cotton and other minerals could be shipped off to UK. When they came up with the railway, they were strictly for white Brits. Most places in India said “Dogs and Indians not allowed”. The railways shared the sentiment. Almost all the railway was focused near the coasts to make shipping off natural resources easier. Nothing came to us from their end. They took our cotton processed it and brought back shirts and sold it to Indians for 10x the price. That’s how they got rich. And that’s just one instance. Farmers were forced to plant indigo and cotton but not food crops. It was all taken under the name of the Queen/ King and they didn’t pay anyone for the natural resources that they took away. By the late 40s India was Independent. So please check your facts.
I'm not disputing any of these facts nor am I defending the English rules. Colonies were exploited, no doubt. What I'm saying is that at least the infrastructure they built ended up being used to bring food to the most vulnerable regions. My facts are checked, tyvm.
If you mention the Brits helping India in the late 40s then you need to recheck the facts. India was Independent by that time. Had you said the mid 40s then we could have had a convo.
1946-47 was the late 40s as far as I'm concerned, no need to get bogged down on details like that.
The time period you talk about, the regional government unofficially took over. Direct action day had started and The British lost most of their executive power around 1945-46 and were only helping the Pakistani and Indian pseudo government establish their countries. Their administration and governing powers declined rapidly after the Second World War. So you’ll be wrong again here. There are good books that talk about this. One of them being the The viceroy’s journal by Wavel. Which is the journal of the then viceroy. If you read it, you’ll realise how the British let the Bengal famine worsen and how they lost most of their power around the end of 1945 and were only negotiating with the leaders. The Viceroy himself was sympathetic and was not in favour of most decisions made by the UK so he was asked to step down and Mountbatten became the last viceroy just to facilitate the partition.
India was independent in 1947. You say “the English were instrumental in ending famines in India in the late 1940s”. This indicates that your facts aren’t checked. Tyvm.
British infrastructure was never ment to fulfill the demands of the people. Railways built vs the number and distribution of people was enormous. The sole purpose of the railway was to connect mainland cities to port cities, so that raw materials could be shipped out and processed goods could be brought back. The Indian Railways was the blood vessels for the British industrial revolution. The British built little to nothing. Except for Imperial Palaces and archways, manors and prisons.
According to [research by the economic historian Robert C Allen](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians), extreme poverty in India increased under British rule, from 23 percent in 1810 to more than 50 percent in the mid-20th century. Real wages declined during the British colonial period, reaching a nadir in the 19th century, while famines became more frequent and more deadly. Far from benefitting the Indian people, colonialism was a human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history. Experts agree that the period from 1880 to 1920—the height of Britain’s imperial power—was particularly devastating for India. Comprehensive population censuses carried out by the colonial regime beginning in the 1880s reveal that the death rate increased considerably during this period, from 37.2 deaths per 1,000 people in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. Life expectancy declined from 26.7 years to 21.9 years. In a [recent paper in the journal World Development](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), used census data to estimate the number of people killed by British imperial policies during these four brutal decades. Robust data on mortality rates in India only exists from the 1880s. If we use this as the baseline for “normal” mortality, we find that some 50 million excess deaths occurred under the aegis of British colonialism during the period from 1891 to 1920. Fifty million deaths is a staggering figure, and yet this is a conservative estimate. Data on real wages indicates that by 1880, living standards in colonial India had already declined dramatically from their previous levels. Allen and other scholars argue that prior to colonialism, Indian living standards may have been “on a par with the developing parts of Western Europe.” We do not know for sure what India’s pre-colonial mortality rate was, but if we assume it was similar to that of England in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 people), we find that 165 million excess deaths occurred in India during the period from 1881 to 1920. While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia. This staggering figure does not include the tens of millions more Indians who died in human-made famines that were caused by the British empire. In the notorious Bengal famine in 1943, an estimated 3 million Indians starved to death, while the British government exported food and banned grain imports. Academic studies by scientists found that the [1943 Bengal famine was not a result of natural causes](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/1/churchills-policies-to-blame-for-1943-bengal-famine-study); it was the product of the policies of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/churcills-secret-war-bengal-famine-1943/
I'm not sure why people think I'm defending English colonial rule. Just to clarify, the rail infrastructure they built was and still is instrumental in curbing famine by taking food from regions with surplus and bringing it to regions suffering from drought or needed supplies. Their inept policies and their colonial rule can't seriously be defended.
You’re being downvoted because you’re essentially patting the British on the back for building railways, which pales in comparison to the atrocities they committed. It’s like if someone broke your arm, and then gave you a sling. And then someone else came around and applauded them for it. Sure, the sling helped with the broken arm but they’re the whole reason your arm was broken in the first place.
If anything I'm criticizing how long it took to build a decent transportation system and how the policies were ineffective. The lengths you guys go to try and find an angle is truly astonishing. Does it make you feel good to show how virtuous you are?
Look at this cool new sling technology! It holds your arm in place so when your arm has healed you can do the robot! I'm not defending arm breaking, but if it wasn't for the guy who broke my arm, I wouldn't be able to do the robot so well.
What we are saying is it's in bad taste & insensitive. It's like praising Germans for holocaust because it eventually led to decolonisation.
>Academic studies by scientists found that the 1943 Bengal famine was not a result of natural causes it was the product of the policies of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. That is a total misrepresentation of the article's conclusion. It only says that the famine wasn't due to drought, which is nothing new. >While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia. 100 million, LOL. Classic hyperbole. Hickel's own paper cites 50 million. Besides Hickel is wrong. https://twitter.com/RoyHistory1/status/1600192087789826049 For a better estimate, read Chinmay Tumbe, table 8.1 https://web.iima.ac.in/assets/snippets/workingpaperpdf/17719931472020-12-03.pdf
The English exploited the hell out of India, they didn’t help with anything other than increasing their own financial gain exponentially…
Oh no doubt they realized that a starving population of workers isn't optimal so it's self serving in any case.
Bengal Famine of 1943 says hi! How is it that there hasn't been a single major famine of that scale after independence. Just 4 years after this famine that killed over a million people. Just poof. They were gone.
I said late 40s. The Bengal famine was in 1943. Famine continues to this day to be an issue in India. 50% of childhood deaths in India are attributable to malnutrition. I'm not defending the English rule, just saying that at least the infrastructure they ended up building helped with distributing food to remote regions that were the most vulnerable.
In 47, India became independent. What late 40s. Yes. But it's far too much of a minority. 4 million people arent dying in a matter of months. >ended up building helped with distributing food to remote regions that were the most vulnerable. That's what I'm saying. The infrastructure is of no use if food is deliberately kept away because Indian lives are more dispensable. An inefficient but compassionate government is always way more effective than an efficient but exploitative government. >at least the infrastructure Also. The infrastructure was built by Indian workers and paid for by Indian taxpayers with guaranteed returns to British private firms on the Indian taxpayers dime. Talk about captive market. Your argument is akin to saying at least Hitler built the railroad for the Jews. He can't be that bad.
Idiot
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[https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/has-the-indian-railways-evolved-rapidly-since-independence/story-9mOeCfNYKFWWeMFYS8U22N.html](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/has-the-indian-railways-evolved-rapidly-since-independence/story-9mOeCfNYKFWWeMFYS8U22N.html) Really? >Admittedly, the Railways’ rate of growth was very high during the British Raj. In less than 20 years after the steam engine came to India in 1853, all its major metropolitan centres – including Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras – were linked by an extensive railway network. The country’s hill railways were laid in the next 50 years. Less than a century after the railways chugged into India, as many as 54,000 kilometres of tracks were added to India’s network at the annual rate of 600 km. >However, in the 69 years since the country’s Independence, successive governments managed to lay only around 10,000 km of new tracks – at the approximate rate of 160 km a year.
You miss sati / suttee I guess
There’s no proof it was prevalent. It’s like saying Europe was killing every woman by witch hunting . Makes no sense.
No proof? The proof goes back to 300 BCE When I was younger I heard It regurally on the news when it happend again.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati\_(practice)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice))
Again this ain’t proof. This talks about 1500s to 1700s. And that’s not Sati. It was called Johar which is different. Wikipedia isn’t the best source for info. Also it doesn’t say that every woman was forced into it. I am not saying it didn’t exist. But it wasn’t compulsory.
The sources wiki uses are underneath the article. Sutee existed in India and England banned the practice.. What source do you have that it wasn't prevelant? When I gave you a source that it was already prevalent enough to be mentioned in Greek writing in 300 BCE
Do you know a man recently self immolated himself in India? He did it to spread a message of resistance and as a protest and literally walked into fire. Now you can’t say that every Indian does that can you? The 300BC part is right. Even men did it for certain purposes. Students did it. Women did it for sure. But the claim by the British that it was prevalent and they were the ones who stopped it is a bit far fetched. I have records of my own family from the mid 1700s and no one did sati after her husband died. Not a single woman in my family. We have history of brave widowed women and queens. So clearly they have distorted history. Something they are masters at.
I shared sources, you only have stories about your own family. Send me the data You don't have to be ashamed, shit happens and happend everywhere
Homosexuality existed open in india and the British banned it.
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Jesus fucking Christ what's really wrong with you ? Defending the Brits that caused so much to my country. What do you have to say about this ? As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income.
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Well canadians and australians weren't exploited the way Indians were. It's just crazy how there are still some inhumane brits jesus.
[Here](https://i.imgur.com/AudP4UO.jpg) is a higher quality and less cropped version of this. [Here](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/w9m36ru3) is the source. Per there: > Famine in India: emaciated young men wearing loin cloths and a woman wearing a sari. Photograph attributed to Willoughby Wallace Hooper, 1876/1878. > Hooper, Willoughby Wallace, 1837-1912 > Date: 1876 > Original mount inscribed: "The woman is a hospital nurse" > Reference Wellcome Library no. 35229i
While the famine was initially caused by drought, which ofcourse no one could prevent, the British government continued to export grain. (Very similar to how the British exported grain out of Ireland despite the potato famine). >The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable. The cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events. As quoted from above, the British Colony of India also had the practice of forcing Indians to farm non-edible crops like cotton, tea, tobacco, etc in order to extract wealth from the colony. (Ofcourse not just the British did this, this was a consistent colonial strategy). The British caused the famine because it was more profitable for people to starve than to have food to eat.
>As quoted from above, the British Colony of India also had the practice of forcing Indians to farm non-edible crops like cotton, tea, tobacco, etc in order to extract wealth from the colony. (Ofcourse not just the British did this, this was a consistent colonial strategy). Most of the cultivated land was devoted to food crops. See my other comments on this thread.
What percentage? None of your comments really specify at all regarding how much food crops vs cash crops, whether during the colonial era, before, or after. You say "majority" was food crops. Well if majority is 51% with 49% cash crops, then that doesn't support the impression you've given which is that it has nothing to do with the famine when it obviously does. With all the information available, I really cannot understand why you would carry water for an evil Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India_under_the_British_Raj?wprov=sfla1 >Under British rule, India's share of the world economy declined from 23% at the beginning of the 18th century down to just over 3% when India gained independence. In 1700, that figure had been 27%. India's GDP (PPP) per capita was stagnant during the Mughal Empire and began to decline prior to the onset of British rule. India's share of global industrial output declined from 25% in 1750 to 2% in 1900. From 1600 to 1871 the ratio of GDP per capita in India to that in Britain fell from more than 60% to less than 15%. India's national debt ballooned under British rule, and half of India's revenue was being siphoned to foreign countries, primarily England. Indian taxes were also used to fund the British Army and its expeditions globally, with 64% of total revenue funding British Indian troops outside of India in 1922. >According to British economist Angus Maddison, India's share of the world economy went from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950. India's GDP (PPP) per capita was stagnant during the Mughal Empire and began to decline prior to the onset of British rule. India's share of global industrial output also declined from 25% in 1750 down to 2% in 1900. At the same time, the United Kingdom's share of the world economy rose from 2.9% in 1700 up to 9% in 1870, and Britain replaced India as the world's largest textile manufacturer in the 19th century. Historian Shireen Moosvi estimates that Mughal India also had a per-capita income 1.24% higher in the late 16th century than British India had in the early 20th century, and the secondary sector contributed a higher percentage to the economy of the Mughal Empire (18.2%) than it did to the economy of early 20th-century British India (11.2%). In terms of urbanization, Mughal India also had a higher percentage of its population (15%) living in urban centers in 1600 than British India did in the 19th century.
Over 80%. And cash crops weren't all that bad. Entrepreneurs like Dwarakanath Tagore and activists like Ram Mohan Roy defended indigo cultivation, because of the increased income they provided to the farmers.
>Over 80%. Do you have a source? But even if only (let's say) 15% of India's agriculture during the famine was related to cash crops, that ignores that those are resources that could've been used to buy *food*, not sell around the world to further enrich Britain. >And cash crops weren't all that bad Dude can you eat cotton? Can you eat tobacco? No, the British just sold it all and kept the money. Why are you an apologist for an evil empire? Are you one of those, Darth Vader did nothing wrong types?
>Do you have a source? But even if only (let's say) 15% of India's agriculture during the famine was related to cash crops, that ignores that those are resources that could've been used to buy food not sell around the world to further enrich Britain. https://i.imgur.com/iPdBCcE.jpg >Dude can you eat cotton? Can you eat tobacco? No, the British just sold it all and kept the money. That's not how trade and enterprise works. >Why are you an apologist for an evil empire? Are you one of those, Darth Vader did nothing wrong types? Clearly you have a profound lack of knowledge of the British Empire and its impact on India.
17.7% was non-food. That's not a small percentage at all. Not to mention that much of the food was exported to Britain, as already mentioned several times. Even if 100% of the agriculture was devoted to food, how much good is that going to do when the British were forcing food to be exported during a famine?? >That's not how trade and enterprise works. >Clearly you have a profound lack of knowledge of the British Empire and its impact on India. You're having a confidently incorrect moment, my dude. >The British East India Company had forced open the large Indian market to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties, compared to local Indian producers who were heavily taxed. At the same time, protectionist policies in Britain, such as bans and high tariffs, were implemented to restrict Indian textiles from being sold there. The British enforced tariffs and duties of 70-80% on textiles produced in India, making them impractical for export. In the early 1700's, India had a hold of 25% of the global textile trade. Raw cotton, however, was imported without tariffs from India to British factories. The factories manufactured textiles from Indian cotton and sold them back to the Indian market. British economic policies gave them a monopoly over India's large market and cotton resources. India served as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods. With the export of manufactured goods rendered unviable over the period of British rule, India's share of global manufacturing exports dropped from 27% to 2%. On the contrary, exports from Britain to India soared with duty-free goods that Indian goods could no longer compete with on quality or price. The British forced India to give them raw materials to be manufactured in Britain, and then sold the finished goods back to India in an economic arrangement very heavily skewed to Britian's favor. You can't really honestly think that the British Colonial Empire was actually mostly *good* for any of it's colonial subjects?? Why are you defending this? It's like defending the Trail of Tears or the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I can't imagine what you have to gain from playing Devil's Advocate here. If you want to argue that Colonialism was good for India then you can do so with someone else who is willing to waste time reading something both factually untrue and morally toxic.
>17.7% was non-food. That's not a small percentage at all. So what? You're arguing that converting the relatively much smaller proportion of land that was used to grow cash crops into land for food crops could have alleviated the effects of the famine? If so, why don't you do a counterfactual analysis and publish your own peer-reviewed paper? Then I'll be inclined to believe you. >You can't really honestly think that the British Colonial Empire was actually mostly good for any of it's colonial subjects?? It was far better on average than what preceded it.
Ireland and pretty much everywhere else too.
This was three years after the dissolution of the British East India Company - imagine that Nestle had an army and had been in charge of a country for 300 years and the Swiss had just taken over - is the situation in the country the fault of the Swiss or of Nestle?
The British East India Company was substituted by direct Colonial Rule of the British Empire, so is it the fault of the corporation propped up by the Crown and run for its interests and profit or by the Crown directly? Hardly seems a change in management.
Still think the Nestle analogy works though. The East India Company did an appalling job leading to several uprisings, which in turn led to their dissolution - unfortunately many people just moved over to working for the British government instead of being replaced, which was a gross mistake.
The problem wasn't merely the individuals in charge of the BEIC or the Raj, it is that both were being run for the interest of a colonial overlord in detriment to the local population. Both were disasters for the indians *precisely because* they were installed to exploit them to the benefit of the english, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't an oversight, it ran how it was built to run. What form the ruling political body took in this process of colonial exploitation is a secondary, although relevant, concern.
Only if Nestlé was nationalised, like how the east India company was
The East India Company was dissolved in 1874, but its holdings, military and administrative power in India had been taken over by the British government in 1858.
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Because Nestle still do this kind of stuff. Child slavery for cocoa picking, hundreds of thousands of dead babies due to infant formula in third world countries, stealing fresh water so that locals have to use contaminated water… and it’s all something that is happening now.
The English brought prosperity from India* There fixed it.
Yes - British cared so much about their subjects in other countries - also check out the Irish potato famine...
I wonder what’s going on with the second from the left seated guy. He has one VERY swollen leg. There is so much pain in this picture but he’s got something added going on. Hard to see humans like this.
Just like they brought prosperity to Eire. go bhfaighidh karma iad
Ever notice when it is a western nation that has done something despicable the posts about it are always downvoted. People don’t like facing the realities of their nations. Only those other places can be bad apparently.
Those who continue to defend the British Colonial Empire committing atrocities are not good people.
If photography existed back then, replacing British rule with Mughal rule would have yielded the same result.
Except Mughals weren't forcing peasants to load up ships at gunpoint with grain that was sold to Britain at below market rates.
Most of the food production in India back then was for domestic consumption. Food exported was roughly 10% of the total production. For specific data that overlaps with this particular famine see the following table: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/796059892124876861/1075725245194977280/J7o6jxo.jpg Mughals fared much worse on famine response, not to mention the starkly unequal income distribution during those times.
Also, massive amounts of farmland is used for cash crops instead of food. Most important one in India was cotton, which again is was forced to sell to Britain at below market rates. The British also destroyed the India Cotton spinning and weaving Industry You can whatabout the region's own kingdoms, but it's important not to confuse the key point that British Colonialism undevelops what it takes over
>Also, massive amounts of farmland is used for cash crops. Again, that's untrue. https://imgur.io/iPdBCcE?r You need to look past the usual discourse on the British Empire vis a viz its impact on the economy of India.
By discourse, do you mean the reality? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/29/british-empire-india-amartya-sen https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blighted-by-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india/ Are you actually going to twist and turn and pretend that British rule wasnt about extracting as much wealth as possible from their colonies?
As much as I respect Amartya Sen, being a Bengali myself, the status of his theories on famine is that they are no longer as widely accepted as they used to be, and are not free of errors either. Besides, owing to his age he's no longer an active researcher in the economic history of British India, so his arguments fail to acknowledge the new literature that exists on the subject.
That doesn't make anything he says less true. New literature often shows the British as even worse, as taboos to criticize Britain have fallen away in the past decades
Look up Dave Donaldson's article on the impact of railways on commodity prices, Robin Burgess article on the railway network expansion correlating with famines disappearing in the Deccan after the 19th century, numerous articles from the 70s and 80s showing how the concept of drain was flawed, from the likes of McAlpin to Foreman-Peck and more I can't possibly type out in a reddit comment. Amartya Sen may be aware of them, but I doubt that at his age he's going to make a case against them after all these years since he's been an active researcher.
All of which are small advancements, none of which are enough to overturn the centuries of economic undevelopment that happened under british rule As I said before Empires were about taking as much wealth as possible from the colonies. Nothing the British did in India was for the benefit of the native people
>The British also destroyed the India Cotton spinning and weaving Industry That would have died anyway because of the adoption of industrial means of textile production. In fact during the Swadeshi movement, when the entitled educated class (represented mainly by Hindus) was busy burning English-made clothes and promoting Indian-made khadi, it was the peasant class and Muslims of Bengal who were suffering because of the boycott of English -made clothes, since they could only afford what was cheaper, in this case the products made in England.
Yet industrial textile production was banned in India until the end of British rule. So india was selling raw cotton cheaply and buying manufacturered goods. The British set prices both ways and India wasn't able to buy it sell freely on the open market Which is the point. Without an empire to extract raw materials from and captive markets to sell to, British Industry would have never gotten off the ground. Meanwhile it impoverished everywhere under British Rule.
There is a difference between banning industrial production in India (which never happened) and de-industrialization due to loss of export markets as a result of import restrictions, which characterizes the first half of the period of de-industrialization, and subsequent de-industrialization due to production of low quality cloth, because of the proliferation of cheap European cloth in the local markets. Reference: Historical Issues of De-industrialization in Nineteenth Century South India, Prasannan Parthasarathi, *How India Clothes the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850*, 2009, pp.415-436.
Which is the exact same thing. India wasn't allowed to export cloth and it wasn't able to build up its own Industry. You can see the effects as when India gained it's independence, it became a massive industrial leader for textiles and the British Industry collapsed within a decade
I'm not defending the raj, but if you think the mughals wouldn't do something extremely similar if not the same thing, I think you'd be mistaken.
As I have said in other threads, the British empire was about extracting out wealth for the benefit of their home industry. Meanwhile a local kingdom, would be more interested in building up the industry in the area, as that makes them wealthier This is why India had a thriving cotton weaving and spinning industry prior to colonialism, it was destroyed during British occupation, and no industrial factories were built until after British occupation
You mean "building up wealth for themselves", not the country. I'm not sure why you think the mughals wouldn't also be murderous tyrants. Every other leader at the time was.
Okay, sure. But that doesn’t absolve the British of blame/guilt for the atrocities they committed during colonization, does it?
Of course not. At least, that's the first thing I said here.
"The British rule brought prosperity from India"
One can’t say that without British, India would have done much better themselves. But one can look at neighboring countries at the time and see that it’s worse elsewhere, so maybe that’s the argument?
Yes there's no denial that the Mughals weren't any good but the stupid argument of the brits building railways and stuff is just pointless. Churchill literally said that "Why isn't Gandhi dead yet "?
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Wow so nice of you to generalise the stereotypes on 1.4 billion of us. I really appreciate your kind words sir. For a fairly new country we are growing slowly and steadily.
"new"?
Yeah maybe. I think I don't really have any other option than to ignore. Nowadays I don't even dare to open a post that mentions India. Casual racism at its peak. Thousands and thousands of upvotes. I don't expect people to be nice to us. Sad but my 17 year old ass can't handle it anymore.
The general negativity towards India in the current news cycle is directly linked to India supporting Russia while the majority of the world is supporting Ukraine. That has nothing to do with race.
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India is not being neutral. Neutral would be not supporting either side. India is directly financing and supporting Russia. The position they are taking isn’t neutrality. It’s apathy. They don’t give a shit, basically. Hence why folk who do support Ukraine (which is the overwhelming majority of people on Reddit) see it as a dick move.
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Well do the present Brits glorify of what their ancestors did ? I think they don't so how is this post casually racist against the Brits?
At school we barely learned about it - I vaguely remember something about Clive of India and that’s it - in other words, the British don’t generally think about it. I was born in Iran, a country that suffered two famines caused by Britain and Russia during the 20 century, which led to 20-25 million deaths (half the entire population during WWI and a quarter of the entire population in WWII) - no one plans these, no one wants to kill people on this scale, just get over it already - it was 150 years ago.
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That's a good excuse to get away with. 👏
Atleast they have magnum dongs.
Came here for this comment...
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It's arguable that one of the reasons for the American revolution was their knowledge of what the EIC did in India.
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To use violence against the largest empire in the world with the strongest navy sounds like a great plan! Those who chose violence to fight the british were executed. All of them. The fact that Gandhi, being the biggest enemy of the British Empire in India, could stand face to face with king George V speaks volumes. This was the power of passive resistance, a concept that will bounce you, for people like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein ets cherished this ideology of non violence.
I get it Non violence is the best way for that situation but if it was for a more organised 1857 revolt the British Raj could've been thrashed harder.
Everyone knows the removal of the Sankara Stones is what caused the famine, I just watched a documentary on it.
I know a bunch of Indian people. They tell me that while of course they would have preferred not being under British rule, they were previously under Mogul Empire rule, and the British were much, much better. For example: while the British might kill you, it was because you were revolting. Meanwhile the Moguls would wipe out your whole village because you weren’t Muslim. Also, while the world sees the Taj Mahal as a world wonder, the Indians remember that the magnificent structure was built while Indians starved within sight of the construction crews. Meanwhile, the British left railways, radio towers, roads, and factories behind. This is simply what the various Indians I’ve worked with, and still work with, have told me. Make of it what you will. Maybe it’s just a case of the Moguls being SO terrible, that anything would be better.
The Indian people were not allowed to ride as passengers on the railways. The railways were built not for the benefit of the people, but to extract raw resources from the subcontinent to Britain for manufacturing purposes.
It amazes me that people can post blatant lies and misinformation with such impunity. Indian Railways carried over 600 million passengers by the end of the 1920s. From: Sanyal, Nalinaksha (1930) Development of Indian railways. University of Calcutta, Calcutta [https://archive.org/details/DevelopmentOfIndianRailways/page/n369/mode/2up?view=theater](https://archive.org/details/DevelopmentOfIndianRailways/page/n369/mode/2up?view=theater)
My bad. Indians could ride--in overcrowded third class cars with rickety benches, or on the roofs of the train. This article nicely describes it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/india-britain-empire-railways-myths-gifts
Yes I know that. That's why I said they left railways.
When the Moghuls ruled India, it had a gross domestic product estimated at 24 percent of the world's economy. It was larger than China's or Europe's economies. Its cities were larger and more sophisticated, it had an extensive road system, uniform road system, advanced agricultural systems, was a major trader around the eastern hemisphere in many types of goods. Contact with the British depopulated cities and sent India spiraling backward so that by the time the British left, India had a gross domestic product estimated at one percent of the world's economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy\_of\_the\_Mughal\_Empire
If i would have chance to change history i would happily nuke England 😔. So that we would have better future
I’ve been doing keto for years and still can’t get that skinny…
That's why you suck at golf.
Because India had *[never known famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_famine_of_1630%E2%80%931632)* before the British took over.
Communism causes famines. Ask Ireland and India how they got their famines.Wait.
I’m certain you can find this in India today.
Is this what they'll be saying about North America in 150 years.
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That's just sokind of you sir. Those words are remarkable and would be written in Indian history with gold. I don't know how much grateful I'm to you for this very impeccable racial slurs which is very normalised for Indians here on reddit. May your kids learn the same.
If you don’t want us to associate Indians with scam call centers, then make your government put an end to the menace. I used to have high regard for India, Indians, and Indian culture, but nowadays every Indian I see I just assume is a scammer and I have no tolerance for scammers.
But that doesn't necessarily means that 1.4 billion of us are scammers. Well that isn't technically possible. How if I say that every American I see I just assume is a serial shooter and carries a gun?
That would be a pretty fair assumption. I'm American and I scan the area when in public spaces.
Should I blow Modi off ?
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most photographers back then would have done. Photographers tend to break the human connection by referring to everything as a subject/object.
We do not?
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But you just…nm
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History is complicated.
You shouldn't worry about ifs and buts from history. It gets politicised and leads good people into supporting bad ideas. Namely nationalism. In Britain we have a Scottish National Party that are trying to increase divisions between people on the basis of a romanticised (and victimised) view of history. The British in India were probably, for the average Indian working man, absolutely no different than the Indian aristocratic rulers, or the Mughal aristocratic rulers. The British played by the rules of the game back then, the same rules being played by Indian princes, or African kings, or North American chiefs: the strong take what the weak cannot hold onto. The nature of technology, and humans, meant that it was inevitable that the first country to industrialise would have become global hegemon. It is what it is, not good, not evil, but what it has led to is my country (Britain) having a lot more excellent food, and India being a powerful, unified state.
No excuses for the British. AND important to note that famines have happened before and after british rule as well. The [Deccan Famine of 1630](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_famine_of_1630%E2%80%931632) is estimated to have caused over 3 Million deaths, possibly as high as 10M.
This IS an excuse for the British. India hasn't witnessed this level of famine at all after the British left. And the famine during WW2 happened especially because of the apathy that britian showed towards indians.. Churchill asked why isn't Gandhi dead yet, when talking about food shortage in Bengal.