Modern economic growth first emerged in Britain and then spread to a few other countries in western Europe and the USA. This book argues that it is her control over India which put Britain at the apex of the world economy in the nineteenth century, and it is British policies and actions, based on her Indian foundation, which led to the globalisation of the nineteenth century – a globalisation very different from the previous globalisations in history.
Technological innovations of the nineteenth century were embedded in that globalisation process. It is this which ensured that growth and innovations would not peter out this time, as they had after various “efflorescences” in history. While the increased availability of silver from the Mexican and Peruvian mines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Atlantic slave trade both had important consequences for global development, the decisive disjuncture that opened the path to modern economic growth was the British victory in the Battle of Plassey (1757), which in due course led to the colonisation of the whole of the subcontinent.
The book is likely to be of interest to a diverse readership, beyond those interested in economic history and growth economics.