IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/90409.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality in colonial India

Author

Listed:
  • Roy, Tirthankar

Abstract

A view popular in Indian economic history scholarship claims that the institutional and commercial policy of British India made the rich Indians richer and the poor poorer during colonial rule. The paper shows that the evidence to support the conjecture is weak. Missing data on peasant income makes it hard to generalize on aggregate trends in inequality. But the evidence does question the role of state policy behind trends in inequality. An alternative account starts from the distinction between land-dependent and trade-dependent occupations. The open economy of the nineteenth century affected these two spheres differently. Low and stagnant land-productivity limited the average return that accrued to land-dependent occupations. Occupations directly or indirectly dependent on trading could escape the constraint partially.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy, Tirthankar, 2018. "Inequality in colonial India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 90409, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:90409
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/90409/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shilpi Kapur & Sukkoo Kim, 2006. "British Colonial Institutions and Economic Development in India," NBER Working Papers 12613, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Vegard Iversen & Richard Palmer-Jones & Kunal Sen, 2013. "On the Colonial Origins of Agricultural Development in India: A Re-examination of Banerjee and Iyer, 'History, Institutions and Economic Performance'," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(12), pages 1631-1646, December.
    3. Abhijit Banerjee & Lakshmi Iyer, 2005. "History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1190-1213, September.
    4. C. A. Bayly, 1985. "State and Economy in India over Seven Hundred Years," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 38(4), pages 583-596, November.
    5. Lakshmi Iyer, 2010. "Direct versus Indirect Colonial Rule in India: Long-Term Consequences," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 693-713, November.
    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. repec:ehl:wpaper:90409 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Roy, Tirthankar, 2014. "Geography or politics? Regional inequality in colonial India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88845, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Amélie Allegre & Oana Borcan & Christa Brunnschweiler, 2025. "Gendered Impacts of Colonial Education: the Role of Access and Norms Transmission in French Morocco," Working Paper Series 20225, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    4. Colleoni, Marco, 2024. "The long-term welfare effects of colonial institutions: Evidence from Central India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    5. Jordi Caum‐Julio, 2024. "Can colonial institutions explain differences in labour returns? Evidence from rural colonial India," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 77(1), pages 288-316, February.
    6. Misra, Kartik, 2019. "Does historical land inequality attenuate the positive impact of India’s employment guarantee program?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Rabah Arezki & Klaus Deininger & Harris Selod, 2015. "What Drives the Global "Land Rush"?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 207-233.
    8. Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2016. "The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(7), pages 1802-1848, July.
    9. Mark Dincecco & James Fenske & Anil Menon & Shivaji Mukherjee, 2022. "Pre-Colonial Warfare and Long-Run Development in India," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(643), pages 981-1010.
    10. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4300 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Gan Jin & Günther G. Schulze, 2024. "Historical Legacies and Urbanization: Evidence from Chinese Concessions," CESifo Working Paper Series 10976, CESifo.
    12. Melissa Dell & Benjamin A Olken, 2020. "The Development Effects of the Extractive Colonial Economy: The Dutch Cultivation System in Java," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(1), pages 164-203.
    13. Madeeha Gohar Qureshi & Unbreen Qayyum & Musleh Ud Din & Ejaz Ghani, 2021. "Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson’s Notion of Exogenous Imposition of Colonial Institutions onto Colonies— A Critique in the Light of Historical Evidence," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 60(2), pages 133-152.
    14. Bharadwaj, Prashant & Ali Mirza, Rinchan, 2019. "Displacement and development: Long term impacts of population transfer in India," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 1-1.
    15. Oliver Vanden Eynde, 2016. "Military Service and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Colonial Punjab," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(4), pages 10031035-10.
    16. Anindya Bhattacharya & Anirban Kar & Alita Nandi, 2016. "Local Institutional Structure and Clientelistic Access to Employment: The Case of MGNREGS in Three States of India," Working Papers id:11549, eSocialSciences.
    17. James Fenske, 2014. "Ecology, Trade, And States In Pre-Colonial Africa," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 612-640, 06.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • N15 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Asia including Middle East
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy

    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:ehl:lserod:90409. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.