Economic history of India Indian reserve Bank held a positive balance of £1160 million, with it, on 14 July 1947, and that British India maintained a trade surplus, with the United Kingdom, for the duration of the British Raj eg. Source: Indian sterling balances, p. 2, 15 Jan.1.1947, Bank of England (BoE), OV56/55. Modern economic historians have blamed the colonial rule for the dismal state of India's economy, with investment in Indian industries limited since it was a colony. Under British rule, India's native manufacturing industries shrank. During the British East India Company's rule in India, production of food crops declined, mass impoverishment and
Famine in India of publications in the 1870s and beyond. Evidence suggests that there may have been large famines in south India every forty years in pre-colonial India, and that the frequency might have been higher after the 12th century. These famines still did not approach the incidence of famines of the 18th and 19th centuries under British rule. Florence Nightingale pointed out that the famines in British India were not caused by the lack of food in a particular geographical area. They were instead caused by inadequate transportation of food, which in turn was caused due to an absence of a political