An edition of Colonialism, chemical technology, and industry in Southern India (1995)
Colonialism, chemical technology and industry in southern India
By Nasir Tyabji
Publish Date
1995
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Language
eng
Pages
242
Description:
Madras Presidency was the central entity of the colonial South Indian economy. Not only was it the largest in volume of production but in administrative terms the Madras Government retained control over the Princely States. It is therefore surprising that of the three Presidencies of British India, Madras has received the least attention from economic historians. Work on the development of industry in Madras is even more sparse. This book is written on the premise that an understanding of the reasons why Madras was industrially backward, when compared to Bombay and Bengal, would help to provide a more nuanced account of the dynamics of the Indian economy under colonial rule. The central argument is that the differential industrial performance of each Presidency is largely due to the role of the major cash crop, specific to each, within the imperial economic system: jute in Bengal, cotton in Bombay, and oilseeds in Madras. Not only was Madras's industrialization inhibited, in comparative terms, by the inability to find a niche for oilseed-based manufactures in the export or domestic market; the technology for these forms of manufacture, essentially of a chemical engineering nature, was more advanced than the mechanical engineering base of the cotton and jute textile industry of the other two Presidencies. Diligent attempts to leap-frog into the era of chemical-based industrialization, albeit with rudimentary technology, were superimposed on the barely perceptible evolution of an economy pivoted on the export of unprocessed cash-crops. The failure of these two processes to integrate into a system-transforming process of industrialization is explained in terms of a complex of issues, related both to direct constraints emanating from the colonial connection, and to problems of technology.