You are showing incredibly obvious signs of not being interested in an honest debate but in a dick swinging contest. So I will not be engaging in any more comment. But I will address what you have said in the previous one.

> Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.

Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity. Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc.

> Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.

Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest.

> In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.

What is your fucking point? Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity.

Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were it not for certain very narrow instances of extremely good timing, the subcontinent would have had a very different history, and likely a much better one.

[0]: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft067n9...