Amartya Sen: More on "Imperial Illusions"
by Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen responds to Niall Ferguson's letter about the legacy of British imperial rule in India.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=42348eec-0823-4c4b-8b86-c2d9db78cc46
Even after overlooking that misattribution, it can, however, be asked whether Ferguson should be so sure that India could have done little of the kind that Japan did. His comparisons with "Qing China" and "Ottoman Turkey" are certainly worth considering, but does he not overlook here the extent to which there were early industrial and financial developments, as well as global affiliations, already in India? I commented on this in my essay: "When the East India Company undertook the battle of Plassey and defeated the Nawab of Bengal, there were businessmen, traders, and other professionals from a number of different European nations already in that very locality. Their primary involvement was in exporting textiles and other industrial products from India, and the river Ganges ... on which the East India Company had its settlement, also had (further upstream) trading centers and settled communities from Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Prussia, and other European nations." Despite the early history of industrial and financial developments in India, we cannot, of course, be sure what would have happened there in the absence of British conquest, but Ferguson's ridicule of what he calls "Meiji India" avoids the important issues involved.