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Q: What does Andrews’s title “Deindustrialization of India” refer to?
A: The decline of South Asia’s industry and economy under British rule.
Q: What does Andrews’s global GDP data on p. 97 reveal?
A: South Asia’s share of global wealth collapsed during colonialism.
Q: What does this GDP decline tell us?
A: That British rule drained South Asia’s resources instead of developing them.
Q: What key concept does Andrews discuss on p. 98?
A: Orientalism.
Q: According to Andrews, what is Orientalism?
A: A Western way of defining and controlling “the Orient” as inferior or exotic.
Q: How does Orientalism relate to colonial policy?
A: It justified domination by depicting colonized peoples as incapable of self-rule.
Q: Who governed India before direct British rule?
A: The East India Company (EIC).
Q: What was the East India Company’s main goal?
A: Profit through trade and taxation.
Q: What kind of taxes did the EIC impose?
A: Heavy land and production taxes.
Q: How did the EIC use the taxes it collected?
A: To fund British administration and armies, not local welfare.
Q: What was one of the EIC’s most destructive legacies?
A: Its role in worsening famine through exploitative taxation.
Q: What continued after direct British rule replaced the EIC?
A: Many of the same exploitative policies.
Q: What pattern of governance persisted?
A: Extraction of wealth and suppression of local industry.
Q: How does Andrews describe British economic policy in India?
A: As deliberately deindustrializing.
Q: What does “deindustrialization” mean here?
A: The dismantling of existing industries and crafts in the colony.
Q: What traditional sector was especially damaged?
A: The textile industry.
Q: What was imported to replace local goods?
A: British-manufactured textiles.
Q: What happened to Indian weavers and artisans?
A: They lost livelihoods and were driven into poverty.
Q: How did colonialism reshape India’s role in the global economy?
A: From a producer of goods to a supplier of raw materials.
Q: What does Andrews say about “civilizing missions”?
A: They were masks for economic exploitation.
Q: What kind of “progress” did colonialism claim to bring?
A: Modernization and development.
Q: What kind of “progress” did it actually bring?
A: Economic dependency and underdevelopment.
Q: How does Andrews connect this to neo-imperialism?
A: He argues the same logic persists in modern trade systems.
Q: What were the British priorities under direct rule?
A: Taxes, troops, and exports.
Q: What effect did high taxation have on peasants?
A: It impoverished them and caused famine.
Q: What major event in 1947 does Andrews discuss?
A: The Partition of India.
Q: How does Andrews portray the Partition?
A: As evidence of British incompetence and violence.
Q: What was the human cost of Partition?
A: Hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced.
Q: What does Andrews mean by “they couldn’t even leave without killing”?
A: That British withdrawal was chaotic and deadly.
Q: After 1947, what kind of recovery does Andrews describe?
A: Rapid industrial and economic rebuilding.
Q: What aspect of India’s recovery does he praise?
A: Its resilience and industrial growth after independence.
Q: What does Andrews warn about this recovery?
A: That it occurs within neo-colonial trade structures.
Q: What is “neo-colonialism” in Andrews’s view?
A: Continued economic domination after formal political independence.
Q: How does trade keep India tied to global capitalism?
A: Through dependency on exports and Western markets.
Q: What contradiction does Andrews identify in modern India?
A: Economic success alongside persistent poverty.
Q: What historical causes underlie India’s inequality?
A: Colonial economic restructuring and deindustrialization.
Q: What does Andrews say about the role of race in imperial ideology?
A: It rationalized exploitation by constructing racial hierarchies.
Q: How does Orientalism legitimize empire economically?
A: By depicting the colonized as needing Western control.
Q: What was Britain’s global image during empire?
A: A “civilizing” nation bringing order and progress.
Q: What was the reality behind that image?
A: Violent extraction and destruction of local economies.
Q: What does Andrews say about postcolonial optimism?
A: It must be tempered by awareness of lingering inequality.
Q: What is the moral lesson of Andrews’s analysis?
A: Colonialism’s effects endure even after independence.
Q: What does Andrews suggest about economic “freedom”?
A: It can reproduce colonial hierarchies under new names.
Q: How is India’s modern economy shaped by its colonial past?
A: Through structures of export dependence and inequality.
Q: What was the original wealth status of precolonial South Asia?
A: One of the richest regions in the world.
Q: What does its postcolonial poverty indicate?
A: The scale of British economic destruction.
Q: What role did the EIC play in India’s industrial collapse?
A: It prioritized revenue over local economic health.
Q: What colonial policy patterns persist in modern trade?
A: Unequal exchange and resource extraction.
Q: What lesson does Andrews want readers to take from India’s history?
A: That imperialism’s “development” narrative is false.
Q: What unites Davis’s and Andrews’s interpretations of empire?
A: Both expose how “modernization” and “civilization” served as covers for exploitation.