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  1. Home
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  3. Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India
  • Cited by 58
  • Tirthankar Roy, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Bombay
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2009
Print publication year:
1999
Online ISBN:
9780511497421
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497421
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society (5)
Subjects:
Area Studies, South Asian History, Asian Studies, History, Economic History
Information

Book description

The majority of workers in South Asia are employed in industries that rely on manual labour and craft skills. Some of these industries have existed for centuries and survived great changes in consumption and technology over the last 150 years. In earlier studies, historians of the region focused on mechanized rather than craft industries, arguing that traditional manufacturing was destroyed or devitalized during the colonial period, and that 'modern' industry is substantially different. Exploring material from research into five traditional industries, Tirthankar Roy's book contests these notions, demonstrating that while traditional industry did evolve during the Industrial Revolution, these transformations had a positive rather than destructive effect on manufacturing generally. In fact, the book suggests, the major industries in post-independence India were shaped by such transformations. Tirthankar Roy's book offers penetrating insights into India's economic and social history.

Reviews

"This book is a must for any scholar concerned with transformations of traditional enterprise in the modern world economy. The extensive bibliography, solid revisionist argument, and detailed evidence also make it a new classic in the economic history of modern South Asia." Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This impressively researched book by Tirthankar Roy perhaps drives the last nail into the coffin of the old nationalist, and sometimes Marxist, assumption that artisanal industries of precolonial India were dealt a death blow in the colonial period when British rule created a market for industrial goods that were either imported or manufactured locally...His approach is a welcome corrective to some of the received views on the history of Indian economy under British rule..." American Historical Review

"This new book by Tirthankar Roy of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Bombay is well worth reading. It is a careful and extremely well researched discussion of the evolution of five important craft-based industries during the colonial period." EH.NET (Feb 01)

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