In the previous chapter we have provided an overview of the most important determinants of economic integration in India and Europe, and have briefly glanced at relevant aspects of the general history and the qualitative picture of market integration. Now it is time to present the quantitative assessment of the levels and processes of market integration in both regions.

It was mentioned in the Introduction that the paucity of historical economic data is much more pronounced for India as compared with European and even some other Asian countries. This shortage is not limited, in the Indian case, to specific variables; there is a pronounced scarcity of all economic data prior to the nineteenth century and it is also a symptom of a more general phenomenon which has been plaguing Indian historiography, namely a general shortage of the non-European sources on India. It is therefore hardly surprising that quantitative studies on all aspects of Indian economic history have mostly been confined to the time after 1860, when the British administration started to systematically collect and publish official statistics. For what may be labeled the “pre-statistical” period – before 1860 – economic data becomes scanty and is scattered around in numerous sources and regional studies, and nearly no systematic efforts have yet been made to amass the economic data available and to explore it in an all-Indian or international context.