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
Political warfare in British colonial India the Indian Mutiny and the transition of rule from the East India Company to the Crown, the British attempted to prevent future disturbances by strengthening indigenous elites in some regions of the colony and allowing them to rule local lands along supposedly traditional lines. Parallel developments affected the Indian Civil Service after the Company’s system of patronage came to an end with Company rule; there was renewed effort to tie the Indian landholders to the princes and the Raj, endorsing their power and privilege, revitalising the nobility, and then tying it to the Queen by proclaiming her empress of India.