sbmthakur

Could be just use a skill i think

Local rulers who descended from Mughals were largely considered natives. Taking Siraj-ud-Daulah as example, it's true that the Local population was happy to see him go(at least the non Muslims were) but he was definitely considered a native, especially when compared to Europeans.

The key difference I was trying to highlight with my comment was assimilation vs extraction. By early 19th century, it was pretty clear among British polity that India is to be treated as a colony for resource extraction and nothing more.

Non colonized countries like China and Nepal were still semi-colonized due to unfair treaties. Japan which largely remained free did industrialize.

A debate does exist around the how much of India's decline can be attributed to the British as fragmentation of central political authority started long before British arrival.

US and Switzerland had their respective advantages like large domestic market and high value industries. The population of these nations had the time to learn and adapt. The familiarity to western education obviously helped as transferring IP was relatively easy. These opportunities were absent in company ruled India(things did improve marginally once the crown took over). I would largely agree British colonial rule was not exceptional when compared to other mercantile colonies. But I do not see the similarities to Mughal rule of India where the wealth stayed in-house and was even invested locally, the key difference being assimilation vs extraction.

India's economy didn't get a boost because there was practically no industrial policy. British authorities would get their raw materials at gunpoint from the colonies, ship it to Britain for processing, and then ship the finished goods back to colonies (which were artificially shielded from the international markets).

Before getting absorbed by East India company, some native kingdoms/empites did start with modernizing their military which indicates there would be a strong effort towards industrialization if it weren't for the British regulations.

The outward flow of money amd the second order effects like famine make mercantile colonialism more exploitative. A good counterpoint to Thailand is Britain becoming insanely wealthy by contemporary standard during Victorian era.

Sure, the British aristocratic class did exploit the working class. But then we're no longer talking about geographies.

Mercantile entities like the East India Company operated with little to no oversight. This is bound to rile up natives rather soon as oppression and loot are the only objectives. Britain had to fold the company to maintain its rule over India(after a revolt).

This is certainly in contrast to something like Norman invasion of England or Mongol invasion of China where the invaders fused with the local culture.

The navy absolutely was key. But apart from that mercantilism was instrumental. They used trade companies, the most famous being the East India company, as front which allowed the government to deflect responsibility coming their way and this incentivized the moneyed class in Britain as they could "invest" in the colonial loot.

Victorian era was the time when Britain had consolidated its empire in the east and fruits of industrial revolution were ready. I guess that lowered the incentives for innovation. In contrast, Britain made some good scientific progress in the run up to WW2(and the war also expedited some of it, Alan turing's work for instance).

Such corrections become even more important in the age of LLMs where we're gonna see more fake stuff. I honestly thought this is some kind of a joke but it turned out be a talk.

I'd built a small extension for myself to ignore posts that included words like thrilled, excited, and so on.

Reading that one now. I finished The Anarchy before that and it was a great intro to the 18th century and how it made the ground fertile for upcoming colonial period.