IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/88845.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Geography or politics? Regional inequality in colonial India

Author

Listed:
  • Roy, Tirthankar

Abstract

Explaining regional inequality in the nineteenth-century world forms a major preoccupation of global history. A big country like India, being composed of regions that differed in geographical and political characteristics, raises a parallel set of issues to those debated in global economic history. With a new dataset, the paper attempts to tackle these issues, and finds evidence to suggest that regional differences, and divergence, were significantly influenced by geographical conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:88845
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/88845/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. C.P. Simmons & B.R. Satyanarayana, 1979. "The Economic Consequences of Indirect Rule in India: A Re-appraisal," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 16(2), pages 185-206, April.
    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. Latika Chaudhary, 2010. "Land revenues, schools and literacy," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 47(2), pages 179-204, April.
    5. Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2003. "Institutions Don't Rule: Direct Effects of Geography on Per Capita Income," NBER Working Papers 9490, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. 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.
    7. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    8. repec:bla:revinw:v:17:y:1971:i:1:p:103-17 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Case, Anne C, 1991. "Spatial Patterns in Household Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 953-965, July.
    10. Osamu Saito & Tokihiko Settsu, 2006. "Money, credit and Smithian growth in Tokugawa Japan," Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series d05-139, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    11. Chitralekha Zutshi, 2009. "Re-visioning princely states in South Asian historiography," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 46(3), pages 301-313, July.
    12. Abhijit Banerjee & Lakshmi Iyer, 2013. "Response to 'A Re-Examination of Banerjee and Iyer' by Iversen, Palmer-Jones and Sen," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(12), pages 1647-1650, December.
    13. 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.
    14. Gareth Austin, 2008. "The 'reversal of fortune' thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(8), pages 996-1027.
    15. John Hurd, 1975. "The Economic Consequences of Indirect Rule in India," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 12(2), pages 169-181, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alvaredo, Facundo & Bergeron, Augustin & Cassan, Guilhem, 2017. "Income concentration in British India, 1885–1946," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 459-469.
    2. Fredriksson, Per G. & Gupta, Satyendra Kumar, 2022. "Land productivity and colonization," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    3. Tirthankar Roy, 2021. "Why geography matters to the economic history of India," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(3), pages 273-289, November.
    4. Shree Saha, 2019. "Historical institutions and electoral outcomes the case of India after decolonization," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2019-033, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.

    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. 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.
    2. Roy, Tirthankar, 2018. "Inequality in colonial India," Economic History Working Papers 90409, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    3. Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2020. "Historical Legacies and African Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 53-128, March.
    4. James Fenske, 2013. "Does Land Abundance Explain African Institutions?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(12), pages 1363-1390, December.
    5. Nunn, Nathan, 2014. "Historical Development," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 7, pages 347-402, Elsevier.
    6. Daniel Oto-Peralías & Diego Romero-Ávila, 2016. "The economic consequences of the Spanish Reconquest: the long-term effects of Medieval conquest and colonization," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 409-464, December.
    7. Mitton, Todd, 2016. "The wealth of subnations: Geography, institutions, and within-country development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 88-111.
    8. Colleoni, Marco, 2024. "The long-term welfare effects of colonial institutions: Evidence from Central India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    9. Nathan Nunn, 2009. "The Importance of History for Economic Development," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 65-92, May.
    10. 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.
    11. Jain, Tarun, 2011. "Common tongue: The impact of language on economic performance," MPRA Paper 34423, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. 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.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4300 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Bhattacharyya, Sambit, 2009. "Institutions, diseases, and economic progress: a unified framework," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 65-87, April.
    15. Gan Jin & Günther G. Schulze, 2024. "Historical Legacies and Urbanization: Evidence from Chinese Concessions," CESifo Working Paper Series 10976, CESifo.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Fenske, James, 2010. "Institutions in African history and development: A review essay," MPRA Paper 23120, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.
    21. 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

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    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:88845. 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.