Was India's decline inevitable?

Russia wasn't even considered in any balance of power before Godunov's embassy to the HRE, which itself had to sail around Norway because every single bordering European state was in a very aggressive anti-Russian coalition and kept even diplomats and merchants out of their territory. Russia didn't actually enter any real coalitions either until the Holy Alliance and the anti-Ottoman wars of the late 17th c.

It's not a case of Russia somehow being given more respect as much as Russia being capable of resisting everyone on their western borders and then some, and being able to rally when defeated. Being included in the balance of power came after they'd already effectively overtaken their traditional enemies (except Sweden, and that also soon enough happened with some help from allies).

As for the rest, you seem to envision the colonial efforts by the maritime powers as being mostly due to a pull factor; something in India was so lucrative that it drew colonizers in, despite high initial costs, and it was attractive enough that direct involvement was in the end preferable to simply trading. It's possible but hard to quantify (would be great if someone could though! To be able to say, this much is the marginal return needed for a 17th c. maritime power to transition from exploration to colonialism, super useful benchmark.).

I do suspect however that at least some of what happened could be better explained by an inability of the local states to resist a push, because the maritime powers by default pushed everywhere they went, not just India. It's just that some states could resist and so make cheap push attempts nonviable. So I don't know if the combination of the pull and push would always prove too much for Indian states in the early modern era or not, but the ability to resist the push seems like the easier of the factors to correct in an AH excercise.

...yes and large scale colonization of Old World states didn't happen until the 18th century so I'm not sure why your examples are particularly relevant. I agree that being able to rally when defeated helped but other non-European states had large-scale rebellions when conquered and failed. Things are much more complex than a single answer. Different factors can themselves rise and fall in importance depending on the situation. The example of being able to resist foes on their western border seems rather tautological. They were able to resist conquest because they were able to resist conquest?

I'd love to hear an argument for why colonizing states would spend so much time and resources taking over India without the pull factor of extensive riches. Why would the British government keep bailing out the BEIC if it didn't make shareholders huge amounts of money?

Your last paragraph also seems somewhat tautological. Yes some states were able to resist maritime powers. There are multiple reasons for this that change depending on the state and time period. Yes, states that were able to resist colonialism were able to resist colonialism. That's not really a "reason" in and of itself.
 
I'd love to hear an argument for why colonizing states would spend so much time and resources taking over India without the pull factor of extensive riches. Why would the British government keep bailing out the BEIC if it didn't make shareholders huge amounts of money?

Because you are confusing colonising states in the late nineteenth century with colonial enterprises in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. BEIC kept getting bailed out not because of the wealth that flowed to the state but the wealth that flowed to its influential shareholders (including the Monarch IIRC)
 
Because you are confusing colonising states in the late nineteenth century with colonial enterprises in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. BEIC kept getting bailed out not because of the wealth that flowed to the state but the wealth that flowed to its influential shareholders (including the Monarch IIRC)

Okay, I'm not sure if you have some kind of mental block in your brain but I literally say "shareholders" in my post. The shareholders controlled the British government.
 
).

As for the rest, you seem to envision the colonial efforts by the maritime powers as being mostly due to a pull factor; something in India was so lucrative that it drew colonizers in, despite high initial costs, and it was attractive enough that direct involvement was in the end preferable to simply trading. It's possible but hard to quantify (would be great if someone could though! To be able to say, this much is the marginal return needed for a 17th c. maritime power to transition from exploration to colonialism, super useful benchmark.).

I do suspect however that at least some of what happened could be better explained by an inability of the local states to resist a push, because the maritime powers by default pushed everywhere they went, not just India. It's just that some states could resist and so make cheap push attempts nonviable. So I don't know if the combination of the pull and push would always prove too much for Indian states in the early modern era or not, but the ability to resist the push seems like the easier of the factors to correct in an AH excercise.
Re: data, you should look at Sanjay Subramanian's researches. Indian spices brought so much cash...
 
The example of being able to resist foes on their western border seems rather tautological. They were able to resist conquest because they were able to resist conquest?

I mean that's jumping ahead of where I was, really. I was only establishing (to me it appeared that in fact we were in agreement on that point) that Russia despite being "in Europe" shouldn't be treated as an example of "Europe" in the maritime empire sense but rather as yet another target of unequal trade and frequent attempts at conquest from western neighbours, but one that was reasonably dynamic and managed to resist where so many other nations did not (and then went on to become effectively a maritime empire that due to geographical circumstances lacked good ports itself).

I'm just fascinated that you chose to compare the two countries which in itself is pretty unusual (as opposed to comparing to China, for example). And since you were the one that brought it up, I'm quite interested to hear why you think 17th c. Russia was expanding steadily (with vast amounts of internal colonization in addition to territorial gain), despite being say, less developed than India, and why 18th c. Russia could take on the Ottomans and Persians successfully, something that usually proved a problem for Indian empires.

I'd love to hear an argument for why colonizing states would spend so much time and resources taking over India without the pull factor of extensive riches.

This is assuming that India is unique in that experience.

Other places that saw attempted or successful colonization at the same period included the Phillippines, Arakan, Senegal, Mozambique, the Kongo/Angola, Gold Coast, Guatemala, Moluccas, Taiwan, Aden, Malaya; it's probably easier to list places where the maritime empires did not push, in fact. They meddled heavily even in places where outright conquest was hard (Siam, Japan, Russia since we're talking about it).

I'm not sure if all these places had incredible amounts of pull, really. So to summarise my speculation: the level of pull required for proper colonialism is actually quite low (much lower than Russia would be able to offer, in fact, and definitely lower than India), and so the push can be safely treated as independent factor.

In the case I am correct, military confrontation seems hard to avoid; and then you'll have to look at the reasons why it worked in some places and failed in others. It's not tautology - we simply haven't looked at any real reasons in any amount of detail.
 
I'd love to hear an argument for why colonizing states would spend so much time and resources taking over India without the pull factor of extensive riches. Why would the British government keep bailing out the BEIC if it didn't make shareholders huge amounts of money?

Well, prestige, "glory" and believed strategic advantages probably mattered as well, at least. They are things that states have been willing to subsidize.

It's not like irrational investment patterns can't persist though, even without considering these goals. Colonial profits didn't ever have to be particularly high to a perfectly rational actor with a perfect perspective on the economy, only high enough to ones with limited options, limited connections and limited perspectives. (Even if say, profits from incremental industrial and agricultural improvements within Britain, or across Europe, North and South American settler colonies, etc. were a good bit higher than across Asian colonial companies, you're not going to have an immediate move to the most rational use of capital. There is inertia.)

....

Back to the OP, nothing is inevitable but OP's assessment of *relative* decline seems fair and quite likely. Modernising states outside the sphere of Western European and offshoots - Russia, Japan, Ottoman Empire - seem to have had relative decline, despite real growth (not growing as fast, per cap. or in institutions to capture and use wealth and so power of states). A trajectory of relative decline also seems to have existed relative in productivity, science, education to Western Europe before the colonization in India (as noted on previous pages, and as interesting as the discussion is about how Russia did not have a markedly different position on similar variables in the 17th to 18th century is.)

(No reason, of course, not to go on with an interesting TL with a lack of relative decline, just that it seems not the most probable).

Some of the relative decline in India is likely to be related to British policies. Particularly policies encouraging poor agricultural investment, and lack of education investment.

Some also likely to be endogenous and independent of rulers; British were not some overpowering, omnipotent force. Some differences in trajectory will reflect culture and paths that pre-exist them - e.g. education / literacy fares differently in different parts of British Empire. Some also how India fit into world patterns of culture and economy - e.g. how much of different Russian / Ottoman experience is tightly linked to location and shared culture distance affecting the degree to which they were more able to attract more productive investment / trade / ideas with Western Europe?

(Assuming that by decline we are talking about *relative* decline in productivity / living standards. If we're talking about decline in capacity of states to act as independent states for a particular people or elite in India, that's even less "inevitable", and as pure a product of colonization as we could have.)
 
No, they influenced it.

Not quite sure why you are so tetchy all the time?

I'm not tetchy all the time. I just get tetchy when someone tries to "correct" me on something that is literally present in the post they quote.

I mean that's jumping ahead of where I was, really. I was only establishing (to me it appeared that in fact we were in agreement on that point) that Russia despite being "in Europe" shouldn't be treated as an example of "Europe" in the maritime empire sense but rather as yet another target of unequal trade and frequent attempts at conquest from western neighbours, but one that was reasonably dynamic and managed to resist where so many other nations did not (and then went on to become effectively a maritime empire that due to geographical circumstances lacked good ports itself).

I'm just fascinated that you chose to compare the two countries which in itself is pretty unusual (as opposed to comparing to China, for example). And since you were the one that brought it up, I'm quite interested to hear why you think 17th c. Russia was expanding steadily (with vast amounts of internal colonization in addition to territorial gain), despite being say, less developed than India, and why 18th c. Russia could take on the Ottomans and Persians successfully, something that usually proved a problem for Indian empires.



This is assuming that India is unique in that experience.

Other places that saw attempted or successful colonization at the same period included the Phillippines, Arakan, Senegal, Mozambique, the Kongo/Angola, Gold Coast, Guatemala, Moluccas, Taiwan, Aden, Malaya; it's probably easier to list places where the maritime empires did not push, in fact. They meddled heavily even in places where outright conquest was hard (Siam, Japan, Russia since we're talking about it).

I'm not sure if all these places had incredible amounts of pull, really. So to summarise my speculation: the level of pull required for proper colonialism is actually quite low (much lower than Russia would be able to offer, in fact, and definitely lower than India), and so the push can be safely treated as independent factor.

In the case I am correct, military confrontation seems hard to avoid; and then you'll have to look at the reasons why it worked in some places and failed in others. It's not tautology - we simply haven't looked at any real reasons in any amount of detail.

(I don't think I understood some of your replies so please forgive me if I misinterpreted something. There seem to be multiple threads of argument going on in this conversation and we might be getting our wires crossed.)

When did we talk about Russia being an example of Europe in the "maritime empire" sense in the first place? The debate between us started with debating on whether "Europe" in general had various things brought up by Richard V and is apparently now about why Russia resisted being colonized. I'm certainly aware that Russia wasn't as advanced as Western Europe if that's what you're trying to establish?

I'm not really comparing two "countries". India is a subcontinent that was very rarely "united" and I was responding to Richard V's assertions about "Europe's" advancements vs India. I wasn't' the one who decided to compare the two-if anything, I've been pointing out in my replies to you that it is very difficult to compare both because they're just so different to each other. This is why I keep emphasizing the multitude of different factors in their respective situations.

In any case, I think Russia was expanding because it's geopolitical situation was completely different to India's. India doesn't have a huge steppe right next to it filled with relatively weak "tribal" polities like the Khanate of Sibir. It also doesn't have the pull factor of the fur trade to draw them in to expanding into the steppe. Instead, India has a mountainous, unprofitable area to the northwest which is filled with people who have vastly superior horses and (and depending on the time period, other weaponry). The west is thus not at all suitable for expansion. On the other hand, there certainly was a huge amount of internal and settler colonialism-the principal example here being Bengal, one of the richest parts of India. The whole reason Bengal is so muslim is because the Mughals were the ones who really managed to develop Bengal through structured policies of encouraging settlement and development there-see The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 by Richard M. Eaton. They weren't even done before the British intervened.

I don't think I ever said that 18th century Russia was less developed than India? The debate over how developed Russia was is primarily about the 17th and 16th centuries. 18th c Russia could take on Persia because it had much greater military advancement compared to 18th c and pre 18th c North Indian empires.

I'm quite aware that many other places were colonized. That was why I asked about India in particular in the post you quoted. I certainly didn't assume that India was unique in being colonized. I'm taking into account the particular resources and effort required to colonize all India in particular. None of the conquests you listed required anywhere near the extensive effort and resources that India did. All of them had enough of a pull factor to overcome the disincentives in taking them over. A bunch were just some isolated trading posts-you can't compare those to the rich, huge, and sophisticated states of India. The EIC wouldn't have even been able to support itself without being able to tax the rich, conquered Indian land. The costs involved in maintaining and expanding their Indian Empire were not equivalent to the places you mentioned. Yes, capturing a teeny little island off the coast of Senegal (which wasn't even able to support itself) as a trading post did not require the extensive pull that India had. The disparities in effort required is huge. Even then, it wasn't like the Europeans just waltzed in and conquered as much as they could as soon as possible. Kongo for example was treated as an equal before the immense value of their slaves became fully apparent. Even then, Kongo avoided direct conquest for centuries afterwards. The push is there because of the pull but it has to take into account a myriad of other factors in order to determine whether the pull is worth it.

I can probably give you the reasons for why a specific example of colonialism did or did not work if you'd like.

Well, prestige, "glory" and believed strategic advantages probably mattered as well, at least. They are things that states have been willing to subsidize.

It's not like irrational investment patterns can't persist though, even without considering these goals. Colonial profits didn't ever have to be particularly high to a perfectly rational actor with a perfect perspective on the economy, only high enough to ones with limited options, limited connections and limited perspectives. (Even if say, profits from incremental industrial and agricultural improvements within Britain, or across Europe, North and South American settler colonies, etc. were a good bit higher than across Asian colonial companies, you're not going to have an immediate move to the most rational use of capital. There is inertia.)
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Well yes but that's why I asked about India in particular. I wasn't talking about the Scramble for Africa.
 
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I think it's falling behind wasn't inevitable, but we'll need either a new dynasty, or at least different Mughal individuals.
 
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