User:Fowler&fowler/Did Britain piggyback on India

Did Britain piggyback on India?

From time to time, various editors present tirades on the Talk:British Raj page about how Britain became a developed country only because it had India (or other colonies) to exploit. This view overlooks that fact that the British economy was already greatly expanding when it encountered India. Here, BTW, are the inventions and discoveries made in Britain during the years 1500 to 1750 before India became any significant part of the British economy. It was those innovations, accompanying the burgeoning mercantile capitalism in Europe, that created the economic and technological growth in Britain during those years.

1500s

• Graphite pencil (1564)
• Redesign of ships (lighter lower forecastles) for speed and maneuverability (1580)
• Francis Bacon (1590s, experimentation; the scientific method)
• William Gilbert (1590s) description of electricity and magnetism (and relation)
• William Lee (1589) Knitting machine
• John Napier (1594) Logarithms (simplifies computation)
• John Hartington (1597) Flush toilet
• 1599 The Joint Stock Company

1600s

• William Harvey (1628) Discovery of circulation of blood in all animals.
• William Oughtred (1630) Slide rule
• Robert Boyle (1660) Boyle's law. Air pump for creating vacuum
• 1662 Royal Society Established (promotes experimentation and proof)
• 1670s Robert Hooke Cell theory of life. Invention of universal joint.
• Isaac Newton (1666–1688) Infinitesimal calculus, Optics, Law of Universal Gravitation, Laws of Motion, Reflecting telescope.
• James Gregory, first proof of fundamental theorem of calculus, co-discovers Gregory series.
• Edmund Halley. 1680s. Maps stars of southern hemisphere, predicts returns of comet named after him.
• John Ogilby (1675) First (accurate and complete) road map of England and Wales.
• Charles Montagu (1692–94) founds Bank of England. First financing of national debt.
• Thomas Savery invents first steam engine for lifting water out of Cornwall's mines.

early 1700s

• Jethro Tull invents seed drill (first mechanization of planting).
• Abraham Darby (1709) Ironworks. Industrial revolution begins.
• John Shore (1711) invents the Tuning fork.
• Thomas Newcomen (1712) improves Savery's steam engine to use piston and cylinder, raised 10 gallons of water through 150 feet (each time) in the coal mines.
• Brook Taylor (1715) discovers Taylor's theorem.
• John Hadley (1731) invents the Octant
• John Kay (1733) invents the flying shuttle for speeding up cloth production.
• George Hadley (1735) discovers processes underlying the trade winds.
• John Harrison (1737) invents the Marine chronometer (H1) and wins the first Longitude prize.
• James Lind (1747) conducts first clinical trial to show that citrus fruits cure scurvy.
• Richard Price (1750s) sets up liability and property insurance.

How does one explain the technological and scientific advances in Britain during the years 1500 to 1750 and the almost total lack of any in India during the same period? (I do know about the Kerala School, which although remarkable, remained a largely solipsist effort, failing to link to technology in the same way that calculus in Europe did.) That was long before the East India Company became a political force on the subcontinent. The Indian "dark age" has more to do with internal political, economic, and cultural dynamics. India (like Egypt, Greece, Peru, Persia), although still a great power, and contemporaneously wealthy enough to leave behind the great Mughal monuments, was not a participant in the mercantile, scientific and technological revolutions that brought great growth to the British (and European) economy during the years 1500 to 1750, and this had consequences in later centuries (for both good and ill). That doesn't mean that colonialism and imperialism later didn't wreak any havoc on the colonized peoples, but that the picture is complex, and it is important not to simplify it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)