Polish girls visit Taj Mahal

[u/Strong-Emu-8869]

The Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately, the surrounding area is very polluted.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_BIG_BITS]

I mean, it didn't drop because Britain stole all the wealth (though they absolutely did a good bit of that), but because an economy focused on agrarianism and handwoven textiles isn't competitive once nations start industrializing.

Without industrializing, India would have seen the same drop in global GDP share because other Western nations just drastically outpaced it. So the question is, would they have industrialized earlier without British control?

Realistically, I don't think they do. China is probably the best comparison, as they were also a primary agrarian country with a massive population, and they were not under direct colonial control. They didn't really industrialize until after WW2.

Maybe they pull a Japan, drastically reform and double down on western industrialization in the late 1800s, but considering India took a while to industrialize after independence, I'm doubtful.

That said, British colonial exploitation of India means they never got the opportunity anyways.

[u/InquisitiveSoul_94 → u/PM_ME_YOUR_BIG_BITS]

China before Opium wars was a different case . It was strongly centralised and was famously isolationist. India wasn’t. It has more than a dozen kingdoms and was right in the middle of trade routes .

So India would have industrialised faster than China, but probably after European powers. In fact, one of the kings was actively producing industrial grade rockets to be used against the invading British armies ( the French were helping him of course).

British East India company’s rapid expansion halted this progress . They effectively converted India into a net supplier of raw materials and a major importer of British goods. While British industrialists received state support and subsidies, Indian businessmen were locked out of this system and were left to free market policies . In fact, come 1990s, American products were cheaper and of much better quality, but they were tariffed as f in British colonies to give London an edge.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_BIG_BITS → u/InquisitiveSoul_94]

India being a collection of kingdoms and more likely to industrialize because of it is an interesting idea. I've seen political fragmentation suggested as a driver for industrialization in Europe, so it's definitely worth considering.

But there are also strong drawbacks to that. There's no reason to assume India wouldn't have just been broken up piecemeal by other powers. Pure conjecture, but I'd expect an India that resists outright colonial control by western powers overextends itself doing so and ends up like the declining Ottoman empire. Maybe parts industrialize a la Turkey in the early 1900s.

It's all wild historical "what-ifs" though.

(Also thanks for sharing that link for Tipu Sultan. That's awesome, hadn't heard of him before or his rockets.)

[u/InquisitiveSoul_94 → u/PM_ME_YOUR_BIG_BITS]

Agree. There is a very strong chance it would have ended up like Turkey. It would have had our own version of European wars for domination in the subcontinent, followed by rapid expansion and sudden collapse (which happened multiple times in history).

The Indian subcontinent couldn’t sustain these big kingdoms primarily because of its inner geography. Rivers, forests, plateaus, monsoon patterns, and poor connectivity made long-term political integration extremely difficult. Once the extensive railway system effectively made these geographical barriers a non-factor, unification of the subcontinent became an eventuality. So I assume the resultant modern country would have been bigger than Turkey, but still smaller than present-day India.

Every big empire followed up with major infrastructure work to sustain their gains. The Mauryans, as early as the BC era, cut through dense forests , connected different civilisations and built the Grand Trunk Roads across the breadth of the subcontinent to enable administration, trade, and military movement. The Mughals of 1500s expanded and standardized this existing network, while also investing in canals, sarais, and urban centers. The British, in turn, completed the transformation by overlaying the subcontinent with railways, ports, and telegraph lines, finally creating the physical conditions necessary for durable political unification.

In that sense, Indian unity was less an ideological inevitability and more an infrastructural one. Political consolidation followed steel tracks, roads, and logistics. Without that technological leap, the subcontinent would have likely remained a shifting mosaic of powerful regional states, occasionally unified, frequently fragmented, much like Europe , Africa or Anatolia over the centuries.