Rethinking the Economic History of Early Modern India

This essay review of Prasannan Parthasarathi's book Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not (Cambridge University Press, 2011) situates the book in the context of ongoing debates in early modern economic history and lays out its contributions to these debates. While the book focuses on early modern India, its argument comports well with the broader interpretation associated with the so-called California School of early modern historians. That is to say, Parthasarathi downplays the economic distinctions between India and the more advanced parts of Europe during the early modern period, and claims that Europe's rise to economic dominance came later and was more contingent than many Eurocentric scholars have led us to believe. In so doing, Parthasarathi sheds much-needed light on the economy on the Indian subcontinent in the period between 1600 and 1850 and helps us to better understand the dynamics of the global economy during this period.