ABSTRACT
This chapter mainly addresses the Indian subcontinent’s path since the British “victory” in Plassey in 1757 until the First World War. The main objective and contribution of this chapter are to present the process occurred during this period as a process of peripherisation of the Indian subcontinent by the British rule. First, we describe the Indian subcontinent’s geography and demography circa 1600. Then, we summarise the main features and causes of the Mughal Empire’s downfall. After this, we present the period between Plassey (1757) and the end of the British East India Company’s (BEIC) monopoly (1813) focusing on the British territorial penetration by fiscal militarism and exploring the evolution of the textile exports dynamics. We then discuss the period between 1813 and the 1850s, focusing on the structural change of the Indian subcontinent productive structure: deindustrialisation. We conclude analysing the period between the 1850s and 1914, elaborating on three main infrastructural transformations related to the Indian subcontinent peripherisation: railways development, agriculture transformation (and famines), and the “wealth drain” theory.
