Ricardo Duchesne wrote: > Before I sent O'Brien's numbers, Ajit speculated that, if we assume > that the take-off to industrialization requires an investment of > approx 8% of the GDP, and that the domestic savings contributes 5% to > 6% of that, whereas the colonies contribute 2% to 3%, then one cannot > deny that that 2% or 3% played a critical role in allowing the > take-off. But, clearly, what O'Brien numbers (cited below again) say > is that "the colonial profits [in the best possible scenario] re-invested would > have amounted to 10% of gross investment" - implying that the > domestic savings would have contributed the other 90%!! > > "Among the many claims of this article is the highly > damaging one that, if we agree with Bairoch's data that commodity > trade between core and periphery amounted to no more than 4% of the > aggregate GNP for Western Europe, and if we assume that core > capitalists made such large profits as 50% on the trade turnover, and > that they re-invested as high as 50% of their profits, the colonial > profits re-invested would have amounted to only 1% og GNP, or 10% of > gross investment." _________________ Just a few points. First, I would be very hesitant about buying his data. Look into all kind of biases there could be in his data collection. The categories such as "Western Europe" are usually fuzzy. In the context of hard data, I would rather stick with a better defined category as Britain. Second, as i have mentioned earlier. Trade data may not be all or even most important one that you need to look at. One needs to look at the data on plunder. As I said "home charges" would not figure in import-export data. They were direct transfers. Third, in international trade the international currency is of paramount importance. As i had suggested earlier, Britain couldn't have gone on buying from rest of the world, including the USA and China, unless Indian surpluses were there to pay for it. These relationships then become of critical importance. I think you need to give O'Brian's revisionist thesis as hard a run as you are trying to give to the so-called progressive thesis. Only then a serious product would come out of this. Cheers, ajit sinha ps. I think counterfactuals are mostly waste of time, and only designed to make ideological points. You cannot go back in history or do some sort of historical experimentation that would show you that 4 or 5% was not critical. All a historian can do is to show how things hung together. Counterfactuals are designed to make predictions. I think historians shouldn't be involved in the predicting game. Thus, for me, even the question that could Britain industrialize without its Indian Empire is a meaningless question. When you are dealing with real movement of time, you are dealing with total uncertainty, and wise men and women should shy away from getting into predicting game in such situations. That's why I think serious theorization can only deal with a given point in time rather than movement along time. Cheers, ajit sinha
