IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cge/wacage/198.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Technology in Colonial India: Three Discourses

Author

Listed:
  • Roy, Tirthankar

    (London School of Economics)

Abstract

The historiography of the development and diffusion of technology in the modern world has grown as a collection of discourses, which differ in points of emphasis. The three common points of emphasis are state intervention, cultural makeup of societies, and economic calculations. The disjointedness characterizes the literature on colonial India (1857-1947) as well, complicated further by the need to understand the role that British colonial rule played in these processes. The present survey discusses, compares, and evaluates the diverse narratives.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy, Tirthankar, 2014. "Technology in Colonial India: Three Discourses," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 198, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
  • Handle: RePEc:cge:wacage:198
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/198-2014_tirthankar_roy.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morris, Morris David, 1967. "Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in South Asia: An Historical Survey," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 588-607, December.
    2. Parthasarathi,Prasannan, 2011. "Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521168243.
    3. Wolcott, Susan, 1994. "The Perils of Lifetime Employment Systems: Productivity Advance in the Indian and Japanese Textile Industries, 1920–1938," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(2), pages 307-324, June.
    4. Roy,Tirthankar, 2007. "Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521033053.
    5. Keijiro Otsuka & Gustav Ranis & Gary Saxonhouse, 1988. "Comparative Technology Choice in Development," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-19140-6.
    6. Parthasarathi,Prasannan, 2011. "Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107000308.
    7. Bogart, Dan & Chaudhary, Latika, 2013. "Engines of Growth: The Productivity Advance of Indian Railways, 1874–1912," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 73(2), pages 339-370, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roy, Tirthankar, 2021. "Useful & reliable: technological transformation in colonial India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113442, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Fenske, James & Kala, Namrata & Wei, Jinlin, 2021. "Railways and cities in India," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1349, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    3. Fenske, James & Kala, Namrata & Wei, Jinlin, 2021. "Railways and cities in India," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 559, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Bishnupriya Gupta, 2019. "Falling behind and catching up: India's transition from a colonial economy," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 72(3), pages 803-827, August.
    5. Gupta, Bishnupriya, 2018. "Falling Behind and Catching up: India’s Transition from a Colonial Economy," CEPR Discussion Papers 12581, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Chilosi, David & Federico, Giovanni, 2015. "Early globalizations: The integration of Asia in the world economy, 1800–1938," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1-18.
    7. Bassino, Jean-Pascal & Broadberry, Stephen & Fukao, Kyoji & Gupta, Bishnupriya & Takashima, Masanori, 2019. "Japan and the great divergence, 730–1874," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-22.
    8. Pim de Zwart & Jan Lucassen, 2020. "Poverty or prosperity in northern India? New evidence on real wages, 1590s–1870s," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(3), pages 644-667, August.
    9. Rafael Torres Gaviria, 2022. "Horsemen of the apocalypse: The Mongol Empire and the great divergence," Documentos CEDE 20533, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    10. Lucas Chancel & Thomas Piketty, 2021. "Global Income Inequality, 1820–2020: the Persistence and Mutation of Extreme Inequality [Global Inequality of Hourly Income, 1980–2020]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(6), pages 3025-3062.
    11. Alka Raman, 2022. "Indian cotton textiles and British industrialization: Evidence of comparative learning in the British cotton industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(2), pages 447-474, May.
    12. C. Knick Harley, 2013. "British and European Industrialization," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _111, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    13. Sagnik Bhattacharya, 2020. "Monsters in the dark: the discovery of Thuggee and demographic knowledge in colonial India," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, December.
    14. Peter Maw & Peter Solar & Aidan Kane & John S. Lyons, 2022. "After the great inventions: technological change in UK cotton spinning, 1780–1835," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(1), pages 22-55, February.
    15. Bassino, Jean-Pascal & Broadberry, Stephen & Fukao, Kyoji & Gupta, Bishnupriya & Takashima, Masanori, 2015. "Japan and the Great Divergence, 725-1874," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 230, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    16. Broadberry, Stephen, 2021. "Accounting for the Great Divergence: Recent Findings from Historical National Accounting," CEPR Discussion Papers 15936, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Deirdre McCloskey, 2013. "A neo-institutionalism of measurement, without measurement: A comment on Douglas Allen’s The Institutional Revolution," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 26(4), pages 363-373, December.
    18. Gupta, Bishnupriya, 2006. "Unions, Wages and Labour Productivity : Evidence from Indian Cotton Mills," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 753, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    19. Yuzuru Kumon, 2020. "The Labor Intensive Path: Wages, Incomes and the Work Year in Japan, 1610-1932," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1154, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    20. Broadberry, Stephen & Custodis, Johann & Gupta, Bishnupriya, 2015. "India and the great divergence: An Anglo-Indian comparison of GDP per capita, 1600–1871," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 58-75.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Colonial India; Technology;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cge:wacage:198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jane Snape (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.