Indigenous and Colonial Origins of Comparative Economic Development : The Case of Colonial India and Africa
This paper concerns the institutional origins of economic development, emphasizing the cases of nineteenth-century India and Africa. Colonial institutions-the law, western style property rights, newspapers and statistical analysis-played an importa...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/01/8941952/indigenous-colonial-origins-comparative-economic-development-case-colonial-india-africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6450 |
| Summary: | This paper concerns the institutional
origins of economic development, emphasizing the cases of
nineteenth-century India and Africa. Colonial
institutions-the law, western style property rights,
newspapers and statistical analysis-played an important part
in the emergence of Indian public and commercial life in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These institutions
existed in the context of a state that was extractive and
yet dependent on indigenous cooperation in many areas,
especially in the case of the business class. In such
conditions, Indian elites were critical in creating informal
systems of peer-group education, enhancing aspiration
through the use of historicist and religious themes and in
creating a "benign sociology" of India as a
prelude to development. Indigenous ideologies and practices
were as significant in this slow enhancement of Indian
capabilities as transplanted colonial ones. Contemporary
development specialists would do well to consider the merits
of indigenous forms of association and public debate,
religious movements and entrepreneurial classes. Over much
of Asia and Africa, the most successful enhancement of
people's capabilities has come through the action of
hybrid institutions of this type. |
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