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The Great Depression and Indian Industry: Changing Interpretations and Changing Perceptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Colin Simmons
Colin Simmons
Affiliation:
University of Salford
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Extract

To what extent was the underdeveloped world caught up in the vortex of the Great Depression? Did the crisis of 1929–33 leave a particular imprint upon the course of the economic history of the Third World during the inter-war period? Can the years spanning this quinquennium be fairly regarded as constituting a distinctive phase within the broader perspective of much longer-run trends? These questions, together with a whole host of related issues concerning the experience of particular areas, communities and industries, have recently been brought into much sharper focus than has hitherto been so. Although this reawakening of concern can be partly put down to the usual workings of the ‘scholarly cycle’, a far more satisfactory explanation may be found in relating it to the current round of public and academic discussion on the impact of the present-day depression. It is surely no coincidence that since the late 1970s there has been a considerable upsurge of interest in the events of that time; indeed it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the subject is forcing its way up the agenda of research priorities at a rate that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Over the last few years an increasing number of scholars have been busily engaged in the twin task of purposively re-examiningand reassessing a segment of intellectual territory that was once taken very much for granted and virtually shunted off to the sidelines. Thus by the end of 1986 at least three major international conferences will have been convened on the subject, and no less than fifty separate papers will have been presented.

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 585 - 623
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

I am greatly indebted to my colleague, Robert Ward, for his help in sifting through, processing and interpreting the statistical series that have been used in Part II. I have also benefited from many hours of discussion with both him and my student Bill Flynn on the general topic of the inter-war Depression. I would also like to thank Clive Dewey and Peter Robb for their detailed constructive comments on an earlier draft presented at the Conference on ‘The Economies of Africa and Asia During the Inter-War Depression’ at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 12–14 December 1985.

1 Notably, ‘The Inter-War Depression: Parallels and Contrasts’, Development Studies Association, University of Sussex, 15–17 September 1983; ‘The Economies of Africa and Asia During the Inter-War Depression’, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 12–14 December 1985; and one is planned for Session 5 of the International Economic History Congress, University of Berne, 24–29 August 1986 (‘The Impact of the Great Depression of the 19305 and its Relevance for the Contemporary World’). I am sure that this does not exhaust the list even as far as English language proceedings are concerned, since many other academic meetings have included papers that explicitly touch on this subject (for example, the Conference on ‘Economic Growth and Social Change in Indonesia 1820–1940’, University of Groningen, 12–14 September 1984, and the ‘Third World Economic History and Development Group Conference’, University of Leicester, 14–16 September 1984). Furthermore, if we take into account the informal empire of Latin and Central America, then we should also have to include the recent conference that has found expression in Thorp, R. (ed.), Latin America in the 1930s: the Role of the Periphery in World Crisis (London, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Cf. Richardson, H. W., Economic Recovery in Britain, 1932–9 (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Aldcroft, D. H., The Inter-War Economy: Britain, 1919–1939 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; and Alford, B. W. E., Depression and Recovery? British Economic Growth 1918–1939 (London, 1972).Google Scholar

3 Cf. Middleton, R., ‘The Constant Employment Budget and British Budgetary Policy, 1929–39’, Economic History Review 34, 2 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Thomas, T., ‘Aggregate Demand in the U.K. 1918–45’, in Floud, R. and McCloskey, D. (eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1900, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

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5 Such as unemployment levels, the growth rate of output and income, the career of particular industries and corporations, the performance of small-to-medium firms, the exchange rate, tariffs and general protectionist devices, the housing boom, regionalism, monetary and fiscal policy, the role of economists as dispensers of advice to the Treasury and, not least, the wider ambit of social change. Since it is scarcely feasible to list all of the relevant publications that have appeared on these topics (even over the last ten years) I will simply refer to the bibliographies contained in Floud, and McCloskey, (eds), Economic History of Britain, vol. 2, and G. C. Peden's recent study, British Economic and Social Policy: Lloyd George to Margaret Thatcher (London, 1985), esp. pp. 82–4 and 120–3Google Scholar. It is instructive to note that the pace of new writing has been so rapid as to render Peter Fearon's survey of 1979, The Origins and Nature of the Great Slump 1929–32 (London), out-of-date. For an indication of development across the Atlantic see Brunner, K. (ed.), The Great Depression Revisited (Boston, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the excellent volume in the Clio Bibliography Series, The Great Depression: A Historical Bibliography (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

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7 This phrase could almost be the motto of the World Watch Institute, and for Lester Brown, its Director and chief publicist, it is certainly a byword. It also regularly cropped up at many of the sessions of a recent T.O.E.S. (The Other Economic Summit) held at the University of London, 16–20 April, 1985.

8 At the popular level the two Brandt Commission Reports, North–South: A Programme for Survival (London, 1980)Google Scholar and Common Crisis North–South: Co-operationfor World Recovery (London, 1983)Google Scholar received a good deal of publicity, as did the two earlier and somewhat wider Club of Rome publications, viz. Meadows, D. H. et al. , The Limits to Growth (London, 1972)Google Scholar, and Mesarovic, M. and Festal, E., Mankind at the Turning Point (London, 1975).Google Scholar

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11 See the interesting discussion and this point contained in Worswick, ‘Two Great Recessions’, and in Aldcroft's, D. H.The British Economy Between the Wars (London, 1983), especially pp. 144fGoogle Scholar. Comparing ‘depressions’ is of course an old game, vide Dobb's, MauriceStudies in the Development of Capitalism (London, 1963, revised edition), esp. ch. 8Google Scholar where he considers the inter-war period in relation to the Great Victorian Depression of 1873–96.

12 Cf. Hughes, H., ‘Debt and Development’ in the special number of World Development on ‘International Indebtedness and World Economic Stagnation’ 7, 2 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diaz-Alejandro, C., ‘Stories of the 1930s for the 1980s’, in Armella, P. A. et al. (eds), Financial Policies and the World Capital Market: The Problem of Latin American Countries (Chicago, 1983)Google Scholar; Saint-Etienne, C., The Great Depression 1929–38: Lessons for the 1980s (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; Nunnenkamp, P., The International Debt Crisis of the Third World: Causes and Consequences for the World Economy (Brighton, 1985)Google Scholar; de Cecco, M., ‘The International Debt Problem in the Inter-war Period’, Banca Nazionale di Lavoro, Quarterly Review 152 (03 1985)Google Scholar;Street, J. H., ‘Development Planning and the International Debt Crisis in Latin America’, Journal of Economic Issues 19, 2 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and W. R. Cline, ‘International Debt: from Crisis to Recovery?’, and Wiesner, E. ‘Latin American Debt: Lessons and Pending Issues’, both in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 75, 2 (1985)Google Scholar; Bulmer-Thomas, V., ‘World Recession and Central American Depression: Lessons from the 1930s for the 1980s’, in Duran, E. (ed.), Latin America and the World Recession (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar

13 According to Gerald Meier, the ‘overriding preoccupation’ of British and American economists in the immediate aftermath of the second world war was ‘the Great Depression of the 1930s, a period about which the profession retained some feelings of guilt.’ By the late 1940s, however, the new Keynesian economics had already made gread inroads and the full employment programmes in the West coupled with the establishment of the I.M.F. at the international level were both established in order to ‘prevent a recurrence of the 1930’s'. Meier, G. M., ‘The Formative Period’, in Meier, G. M. and Seers, D. (eds), Pioneers in Development (Oxford, 1984), p. 11Google Scholar. For a more extended analysis of this episode in the history of economic thinking, see Peter Temin's essay ‘The Impact of Depression on Economic Thought’, in Kindleberger, C. P. and Telia, G. di (eds), Economics in the Long View. Vol. 1 Models and Methodology (London, 1982), pp. 68–88.Google Scholar

14 For some informed discussion of these developments cf. Meier, G. M., Emerging From Poverty (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar; Meier, and Seers, (eds), Pioneers in DevelopmentGoogle Scholar; Sen, A. K., ‘Development: Which Way Now?’, Economic Journal 93 (12 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Little, I. M. D., Economic Development: Theory, Policy and International Relations (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Hirschman, A., Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; and Livingstone, I., ‘The Development of Development Economies’, O.D.I. Reviews 2 (1981).Google Scholar

15 Cf. Foster-Carter, A., ‘Neo-Marxist Approaches to Development and Underdevelopment’, in de Kadt, E. and Williams, G. (eds), Sociology and Development (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Brewer, A., Marxist Theories of Imperialism (London, 1980)Google Scholar; the special issue on ‘Dependency and Marxism’, in Latin American Perspectives 8, 3 and 4 (1985)Google Scholar; Limqueco, P. and Macfarlane, B. (eds), Neo-Marxist Theories of Imperialism (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Chilcote, R. H. and Johnson, D. L., Theories of Development: Modes of Production or Dependency (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Worsley, P., The Three Worlds: Culture and Development (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Chilcote, R. H., Theories of Development and Underdevelopment (Westview, 1984)Google Scholar; and Griffin, K. and Gurley, J., ‘Radical Analysis of Imperialism, the Third World and the Transition to Socialism’, Journal of Economic Literature 23 (09 1985).Google Scholar

16 Chiefly associated in the UK with the work of Lal, Deepak, The ‘Poverty’ of Development Economics (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Bauer, P. T., Equality, the Third World and Economic Delusion (London, 1981)Google Scholar and Reality and Rhetoric (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar; and Harry Johnson (see the article by Harberger, A. and Wall, D., ‘H. G. Johnson as a Development Economist’, Journal of Political Economy 92, 4 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a complete list of references written by the late Professor Johnson).

17 For the most extreme statement to this effect see Seers, D., ‘The Birth, Life and Death of Development Economies’, Development and Change 10, 4 (1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 See, for example, Marawetz, D., Twenty-five Years of Economic Development, 1950–1975 (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar; Meier, , Emerging from PovertyGoogle Scholar; and coming right up to date, de Kadt, E., ‘Of Markets, Might and Mullahs: A Case for Equity, Pluralism and Tolerance in Development’. World Development 13, 4 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bruton, H., ‘The Search for a Development Economies’, World Development 13, 10–11 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Of the three traditions of thought, neo-Marxist, neo-Classical and Liberal-Orthodox, only the first has been consciously historical in its methodology. However, in recent years a few members of the other two traditions have begun to show a greater awareness of the importance of ‘longer run’ forces. For the Liberal-Orthodox, see Toye, J., ‘Does Development Studies have a Core?’ I.D.S. Bulletin 11, 3 (1980)Google Scholar, and his ‘Dirigisme and Development Economies’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 9, 1 (1985)Google Scholar; and for the neo-Classical, Lal, , Development Economics, esp. pp. 82–7Google Scholar, and his ‘The Political Economy of the State‘, mimeo, Discussion Papers in Economics, 84–12, University College of London; and Little, I. M. D., ‘Indian Industrialisation Before 1945’, in Gersovitz, M. (ed.), The Theory and Experience of Economic Development: Essays in Honour of W. A. Lewis (London, 1982).Google Scholar

20 With serious implications for our understanding of both national histories as well as the functioning of the world economy as a whole.

21 Not to mention my own lack of competence to range so widely. Indeed, one of the reasons why so few scholars have felt confident enough to transcend the barriers of both area and time is the relatively undeveloped (or underdeveloped?) state of the art of Third World economic history—and hence the lack of suitable general texts that are required for such purposes.

22 This of course is a problematic word since it is both imprecise and value laden: and anyone writing after Rostow and Parsons may be forgiven for feeling acutely uncomfortable with it—however deeply it has permeated into the official as well as the more general literature. Moreover the more neutral sounding term ‘secondary sector’ is also far from being satisfactory particularly—though by no means exclusively—so with reference to Third World economic structures. As used here convention dictates that ‘the modern secondary sector’ primarily covers those factories and mining establishments that fall within the scope of the relevant legislative enactments and census classifications adopted in India during the period.

23 This was especially true in the first two decades after 1947, cf. the interesting memoirs of the ‘development pioneers’ in Meier and Seers (eds), Pioneers in Development. Apart from India, Brazil, Indonesia and Egypt were the most frequently cited ‘cases’.

24 Barclay Review of ‘Indian Industrialization’, February 1985.

25 For an informative discussion of the relationship between contemporary preoccupations and trends in historical writing see Cannadine's, David article on Britain ‘The Past and Present in the English Industrial Revolution 1880–1980’, Past and Present 103 (05 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Over the last decade or so the emergence of an impressive body of literature (mainly neo-Marxist in inspiration) offering a fresh and exciting interpretation of the modern economic history of South Africa is surely associated with the rising pressures of contemporary life in that unhappy Republic.

26 This term is used in the sense suggested by Kitchen, Gavin in his Development and Underdevelopment in Historical Perspective: Populism, Nationalism and Industrialization (London, 1982).Google Scholar

27 Althusser, L. and Balibar, E., Reading Capital (2nd edition, London, 1977)Google Scholar, esp. pt I, ‘From Capital to Marx's Philosophy’, pp. 13–34.Google Scholar

28 For the work of the Nationalists see Chandra, B., The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India (New Delhi, 1966)Google Scholar; Sovani, N. V., ‘Indian Economics and Indian Economists’, Indian Economic Journal 21, 1 (1974)Google Scholar; Ganguli, D. N., Indian Economic Thought: Nineteenth Century Perspectives (New Delhi, 1978)Google Scholar; and Datta, B., Indian Economic Thought: Twentieth Century Perspectives (New Delhi, 1978)Google Scholar. For the 1950s and 1960s see Hanson, A., The Process of Planning: A Study of India's Five Year Plans (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Lipton, M. and Streeten, P. (eds), The Crisis of Indian Planning: Economic Planning in the 1960's (London, 1968)Google Scholar; and of course, G. Myrdal's Asian Drama (London, 1968). For the period covering the Indira Gandhi years see Meilor, J., The New Economics of Growth: A Strategy for India and the Developing World (Ithaca, 1976)Google Scholar; Chaudhuri, P., The Indian Economy (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Frankel, F., India's Political Economy 1944–77 (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar; Jha, P. S., The Political Economy of Stagnation (New York, 1980)Google Scholar; Bardhan, P., The Political Economy of Development in India (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar; and Balasubramanyam, V. N., The Economy of India (London, 1984).Google Scholar

29 For this most recent period the invaluable Economic and Political Weekly is excellent, and for the beginnings of a fuller interpretation see Rubin, B. R., ‘Economic Liberalisation and the Indian State’, Third World Quarterly 7, 4 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Vanaik, A., ‘India's Bourgeois Democracy’, New Left Review 154 (1985).Google Scholar

30 Naoriji's, DadabhaiPoverty and un-British Rule in India (London, 1871), marking the start of this literature.Google Scholar

31 Which, among other things, opened the way for the election of ‘responsible government’ at the provincial level.

32 It has often been argued that although this ‘accommodation’ has somehow kept India together (and under the I.N.C. in its various avatars) it has stood in the way of the enactment or enforcement of fundamental reforms, see for example Frankel, , India's Political Economy.Google Scholar

33 See Christopher Baker's perceptive recent account of how one provincial government—that of Madras—responded to the Depression: ‘Colonial Rule and the Internal Economy in Twentieth Century Madras’, Modern Asian Studies 15, 3 (1981), pp. 587ff.Google Scholar

34 It is well known that the Bombay Mill Owners' Association even went so far as to argue that the Depression in India was greater than anywhere else in the world—Germany included!

35 Nehru, J., The Discovery of India (Calcutta, 1947), p. 332.Google Scholar

36 Ibid.

37 For an interesting recent critique of such types of economic ‘essentialism’ refer to David Henderson's 1985 Reith Lectures.

38 Nehru, , Discovery of India.Google Scholar

39 For a general evaluation see H. Hughes, ‘Industrialization and Development: A Stocktaking’, Industry and Development no. 2 (1976) and Sutcliffe's, Bob ‘Industry and Underdevelopment Re-examined’, Journal of Development Studies 21, 1 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar As far as India's specific experience is concerned once again the Economic and Political Weekly has led the way: cf. Raj, K. N., ‘Growth and Stagnation in Indian Industrial Development’, E.P.W. Ann. no. (02 1976)Google Scholar, and his ‘Some Observations on Economic Growth in India over the Period 1952–3 to 1982–3’, E.P.W. (13 Oct. 1984); S. L. Shetty, ‘Structural Retrogression in the Indian Economy since the mid-1960's, E.P.W. Ann. no. (Feb. 1978); Varshney, A., ‘Political Economy of Slow Industrial Growth in India’, E.P.W. (1 09 1984)Google Scholar; and Bardhan, P., ‘Some Observations on Economic Growth in India’, E.P.W. (29 12 1984)Google Scholar. For fuller-length treatment see Bagchi, A. K. and Banerjee, N. (eds), Change and Choice in Indian Industry (Calcutta, 1981)Google Scholar; Patnaik, P., ‘Industrial Development in India since Independence’, Social Scientist 83 (1979)Google Scholar; Byres, T. J., ‘India: Capitalist Industrialization of Structuralist Stasis’, in Bienefeld, M. and Godfrey, M. (eds), The Struggle for Development (London, 1982)Google Scholar; and Ahluwalia, I. J., Industrial Growth in India: Stagnation Since the Mid-Sixties (New Delhi, 1985).Google Scholar

40 For two contrasting reviews of the literature on causes see Rubin, , ‘Economic Liberalisation’ (see n. 29), esp. pp. 943–7Google Scholar, and Harriss, J., ‘Indian Industrialisation and the State: A Background Paper’, Development Studies Occasional Paper no. 22, School of Development Studies U.E.A. (06 1983), esp. pp. 16–28.Google Scholar

41 Taken from Vaidyanathan, A., ‘The Indian Economy Since Independence (1947–70)’, in Kumar, D. and Desai, M. (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India vol. 2 c. 1757–c.1970 (CEHI) (Cambridge, 1983), Table 13.6, p. 971.Google Scholar

42 The strategy in general and the Mahalonobis model in particular attracted an enormous amount of thought and literature. For some references see Meier, and Seers, (eds), Pioneers in Development, esp. pp. 17f and pp. 355–9.Google Scholar

43 Re. to Nehru's address to the Lok Sabha, New Delhi, 15 December 1952 (reprinted in J. Nehru's Speeches, 1949–1953, New Delhi, 1954)Google Scholar. In this, as elsewhere, he repeatedly argues that ‘the development of heavy industry does not by itself solve the problem of the millions in this country’ (p. 94), and goes on to say how important agriculture and food is for the Administration's economic policy.

44 I stress the word ‘indirectly’ in order to avoid any charge of simpleminded determinism.

45 As far as Marxists were concerned, before the popularizing essays of A. G. Frank appeared in the mid 1960s, few had really digested the critical insights thrown up by Paul Baran. For a brief consideration of the relevant Marxist historiography, cf. Habib, I., ‘Problems of Marxist Historical Analysis’, Enquiry 3, 2 (1968)Google Scholar; Omvedt, G., ‘Marxism and the Analysis of South Asia’Google Scholar, and Chandra, B., ‘Marxism in India’, both in the Journal of Contemporary Asia 4, 4 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sen, A., The State, Industrialization and Class Formation in India: A Neo-Marxist Perspective on Colonialism, Underdevelopment and Development (London, 1982).Google Scholar

46 For the first round of criticism see the collection of essays (including the original essay by Morris which went into the Journal of Economic History 23, 4 (1963) by Morris, M. D. et al. Google Scholar, Indian Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Delhi, 1969)Google Scholar. Some of the water which has passed under the bridge since then is reviewed by Peter Robb in his ‘British Rule and Indian “Improvement”’, Economic History Review 34, 4 (1981).Google Scholar

47 Though this phrase—suitably qualified—appears in Raychaudhuri's, Tapan essay ‘A Re-interpretation of Nineteenth Century Economic History?’, p. 100Google Scholar, Bipan Chandra's similarly titled piece is much more explicit in its denunciation of Morris.

48 In view of the much smaller number of scholars involved with economic history than with political science it is not surprising that revisionism first made an impact in that area. Similarly it started earlier and went further outside—rather than inside—India.

49 Starting of course with Bagchi's, A. K.Private Investment in India 1900–39 (Cambridge, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and including Ray, R. K., Industrialization in India: Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector 1914–47 (Delhi, 1979)Google Scholar, and Morris, M. D., ‘The Growth of Large Scale Industry to 1947’, in Kumar, and Desai, (eds), CEHI, pp. 607–40Google Scholar. For more recent discussions together with a full list of new areas of research and appropriate references see my ‘De-industrialization, Industrialization and the Indian Economy c. 1850–1947’, and Chandavarkar's, R. ‘Industrialization in India before 1947: Conventional Approaches and Alternative Perspectives’, both in Modern Asian Studies 19, 3 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 C. Dewey's excellent and informative article ‘The Government of India's “New Industrial Policy”, 1900–1925: Formation and Failure’, in Chaudhury, K. N. and Dewey, C. (eds), Economy and Society. Essays in Indian Economic and Social History (New Delhi, 1979).Google Scholar

51 eg. Gordon, A. D., ‘Businessmen and Politics in a Developing Colonial Economy: Bombay City 1918–1933’, in Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A. G. (eds), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of India and Africa (London, 1978)Google Scholar, Goswami, O., ‘Collaboration and Conflict: European and Indian Capitalists and the Jute Economy of Bengal 1919–39’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (IESHR) 19, 2 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Markovits, C., Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931–39 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a fuller set of references see Chandavarkar, , ‘Industrialization in India before 1947’, pp. 635 and 644.Google Scholar

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53 eg. Chatterji, B., ‘The Political Economy of Discriminating Protection: The Case of Textiles in the 1920's’, IESHR 20 (3), 1983Google Scholar, and his ‘Business and Politics in the 1970s: Lancashire and the Making of the Indo-British Trade Agreement’, Modern Asian Studies 15, 3 (1981)Google Scholar; Wagle, B. M., ‘Imperial Preferences and the Indian Steel Industry’, Economic History Review 34, 1 (1981)Google Scholar; Dewey, C., ‘The End of the Imperialism of Free Trade: The Eclipse of the Lancashire Lobby and the Concession of Fiscal Autonomy to India’, in The Imperial Impact; and, of course, I. Drummond's older study, British Economic Policy and the Empire 1919–39 (London, 1972).Google Scholar

54 The literature on labour during this period is now expanding very rapidly indeed; for a discussion of the main areas and an indication of the references see my ‘“De-industrialization”, Industrialization and the Indian Economy’, pp. 608fGoogle Scholar, and the whole of Chadavarkar's essay ‘Industrialization in India before 1947’. For trade unions see the two recent studies of Newman, R., Workers and Unions in Bombay, 1918–29 (Canberra, 1981)Google Scholar, and Murphy, E. D., Unions in Conflict: A Comparative Study of Four South Indian Textile Centres 1918–1939 (New Delhi, 1981).Google Scholar

55 eg. Rothermund, D., ‘British Foreign Trade Policy in India During the Great Depression 1929–39’, IESHR 18, 3 and 4, 1981.Google Scholar

56 eg. Tomlinson, J. D., ‘The Rupee/Pound Exchange in the 1920s’, IESHR 15, 2 (1978)Google Scholar and Tomlinson, B. R., ‘Britain and the Indian Currency Crisis, 1930–2’, Economic History Review 32, 1 (1979)Google Scholar, see also the dispute between Tomlinson and C. Bridge in the same Review 34, 2 (1981).

57 eg. Rothermund, D., ‘The Great Depression and British Financial Policy in India 1929–34’, IESHR 18, 1 (1981)Google Scholar; Charlesworth, N., ‘The Problem of Government Finance in British India: Taxation, Borrowing and the Allocation of Resources in the Inter-War Period’, Modern Asian Studies 19, 3 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 eg. Charlesworth, N., ‘Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Inter-War Depression: The Case of Bombay Presidency’, paper presented to the Anglo-German Workshop on Arrested Development in India, University of Heidelberg, 07 1984.Google Scholar

59 Christopher Baker's work may serve as an illustration of such regionally-orientated studies. See his general survey article ‘Economic Reorganization and the Slump in South and South-East Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, 3 (1981)Google Scholar and then his ‘Colonial Rule and the Internal Economy in Twentieth Century Madras’; ‘Debt and Depression in Madras 1929–36’ in the Imperial Impact; and An Indian Rural Economy, 1880–1955: The Tamilnad Countryside (New Delhi, 1984).Google Scholar

60 On the basis of V. K. R. V. Rao's estimate of total national income (of British India) for 1931–32, Kirti Chaudhury has shown that exports (Rs 1,612m) and imports (Rs 1,306m) accounted for just over 17%. This percentage fell dramatically over the three following years. See his ‘Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757–1947 )’, in Kumar, and Desai, (eds), CEHI, pp. 504f.Google Scholar

61 Morris, M. D., ‘The Growth of Large Scale Industry’, p. 608.Google Scholar

62 Bannock, G., Baxter, R. E. and Rees, R., The Penguin Dictionary of Economics (2nd edn, London, 1980), p. 124Google Scholar. For slightly more elaborate—but no less ‘Eurocentric’—definitions cf. the two standard first-year texts, Samuelson, P. A., Economics (5th edn, New York, 1971), pp. 212fGoogle ScholarPubMed, and Lipsey, R. G., An Introduction to Positive Economics (6th edn, London, 1980).Google Scholar

63 Besides a reading of the usual secondary sources (fn. 28 above) this impression has been formed as a result of many hours of poring over contemporary documents—especially the volumes of evidence relating to the various Tariff Commission enquiries. Needless to say it is a great simplification to talk of a single Nationalist stance, and even in the centenary year of the I.N.C., one shouldn't be tempted to equate national opinions with that of the Congress Party. Nor should we forget to note that opinion in the Princely States requires—though rarely receives—separate treatment.

64 For those uninitiated in the ways of the Indian official returns I should explain that employment in (registered) factories and mines was always presented thus. The basic idea behind this category of ‘daily average’ was that it was deemed to be the only practicable method of measuring a supposedly ‘uncommitted’, feckless and seasonally oscillating labour force. For any number of reasons it is not a very accurate measure—but short of a massive exercise in recalculation (and that may not be possible for many industries) we seem stuck with it.

65 For a pithy overview of the controversy see Charlesworth, N., British Rule and the Indian Economy 1800–1914 (London, 1982), ch. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 This point has been made by many critics of Alan Heston's compilations of N.D.P. in CEHI, vol. 2. See, for example, Habib, I., ‘Studying a Colonial Economy—Without Perceiving Colonialism’, Modern Asian Studies 19, 3 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bagchi, A. K.. ‘Review’, American Historical Review (04 1954)Google Scholar; Chaudhuri, P., ‘Review’, Economic Journal (03 1984)Google Scholar; and my own ‘Seminal Contribution or False Dawn? A Critical Interpretation of the Cambridge Economic History of India 1757–1970’, Kashmir Economic Review 2, 1 (1985).Google Scholar

67 Morris, M. D., ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry’, p. 676.Google Scholar

68 Such practices have long been recognized in the literature on the Managing Agency system (cf. the standard references of Lokanathan, P. S., 1935Google Scholar; Brummer, A., 1954Google Scholar; Mehta, M. M., 1955Google Scholar; Basu, S. K., 1958Google Scholar; and Hazari, R. K., 1966Google Scholar). For an attempt to show this using primary evidence see Papendieck, H., ‘Some Problems of Quantifications in Indian Business History’, Bulletin of Quantitative Methods in South Asian Studies 1 (06 1973).Google Scholar

69 Bagchi, A. K., The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge, 1982), p. 92.Google Scholar

70 Morris, M. D., ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry’, p. 608.Google Scholar

71 The use of financial—rather than calendar-years—was dictated by the nature of the data base.

72 Sivasubramoniam, S., ‘Income from the Secondary Sector in India, 1900–47’, IESHR, 14, 4 (1977).Google Scholar

73 See pp. 469–73, ibid. This group includes glass making, brewing, certain chemicals, engineering, f.d.t., paints and varnishing, ceramics, rice milling, metals and the ‘seasonal’ industries.

74 Heston, A., ‘National Income’, in CEHI, vol. 2.Google Scholar

75 Refer to fn. 66 above.

76 Sivasubramoniam, S., ‘National Income of India, 1900–01 to 1946–47’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Delhi School of Economics, 1965.Google Scholar

77 C. Simmons, ‘The Economic Growth of the Kolar Gold Fields 1881–c. 1955: Introduction, Discovery and Source Materials’, Paper presented to the International Mining History Conference, University of Melbourne, August 1985.

78 Simmons, C., ‘Labour and Industrial Organisation in the Indian Coal Mining Industry 1900–1939’, unpublished D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1974, ch. 2.Google Scholar

79 Since space was strictly limited I have refrained from producing full print-out details of all the regressions that were run. By and large they all point in the same direction—although there are some interesting exceptions.

80 cf. Hilgerdt, F., Industrialization and Foreign Trade (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; Ray, R. K., Industrialization in India, ch. 1Google Scholar, and Morris, M. D., ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry’, pp. 608f.Google Scholar

81 For the global picture see Bairoch, P., ‘International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980’, Journal of European Economic History 11, 2 (1982)Google Scholar, and Reynolds, L. G., ‘The Spread of Economic Growth to the Third World’, Journal of Economic Literature 21, 3 (1983)Google Scholar; and for the Latin American experience in particular: Frank, A. G., Latin America:. Underdevelopment or Revolution (New York, 1969) and Thorp, (ed.), Latin America in the 1930's.Google Scholar

82 Bayly, C. A., ‘State and Economy in India over Seven Hundred Years’, Economic History Review 38, 4 (1985), p. 595CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In fact, between 1928 and 1932, the years he cites, the (nominal) value of Indian exports fell from Rs 3,391m. to Rs 1,359m (Chaudhuri, K. N. in CEHI vol. 2, Table 10.7D).Google Scholar

83 cf. Morris, , ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry’, pp. 61 of.Google Scholar; Lal, , The Poverty of Development Economics, pp. 85–7Google Scholar; Little, , ‘Indian Industrialization before 1945’Google Scholar; and Bagchi, , Private Investment in India, pp. 45f.Google Scholar

84 Baker's work testifies to this trend, see fn. 59 above.

85 For a discussion of the factors responsible for the failure to generate a capital-goods industry in India before 1947 with specific reference to textile machinery, see Kirk, R. and Simmons, C., ‘Lancashire and the Equipping of the Indian Cotton Mills: A Study of Textile Machinery Supply 1854–1939’, in Ballhatchet, K. and Taylor, D. (eds), Changing South Asia: Economy and Society (London, 1984), especially pp. 178fGoogle Scholar, and Clay, H., Kirk, R. and Simmons, C., ‘Machine Manufacture in a Colonial Economy: The Pioneering Role of G. Hattersley & Sons Ltd. in India 1919–1943’, IESHR 20, 3 (1983).Google Scholar

86 cf. Kemp, T., Industrialization in the Non-Western World (London, 1983), pp. 81fGoogle Scholar; Bagchi, , The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, p. 92Google Scholar; Bayly, , ‘State and Economy in India’, p. 595Google Scholar; and Morris, , ‘The Growth of Large-Scale Industry’, pp. 554f.Google Scholar

87 Simmons, , ‘De-industrialization’, p. 622.Google Scholar

88 Which even Morris himself now recognizes, cf. his review article ‘Private Industrial Investment on the Indian Sub-Continent 1900–1939: Some Methodological Considerations’, Modern Asian Studies, 8, 4 (1974)Google Scholar, with his ‘The Growth of Large-Scale’ Industry', esp. pp. 553–8.Google Scholar

89 Neither Amiya Bagchi's Private Investment in India, nor Rajat Ray's Industrialization in India, are informed by a use of private business records and are poorer for it.

90 Such as Bayly's, C. A. recent (1985) observation that, ‘The 1930s depression stands as the last of the old type of Indian economic crisis and the first of a new’, in his ‘State and Economy in India’, p. 595.Google Scholar

91 Eliot, G., Adam Bede (Signet Classics, New York, 1961 edition).Google Scholar