Colonial history can be misunderstood.
Of course, that is part of the complaint made about how the colonisers – the pink and European people like me – think about colonisation and what occurred.
But the misunderstandings about the economics of colonies seem to run the other way.
Take a point made by Ashikur Raman in this newspaper, that before the British arrived – again, pinkish people like me – India was 20 per cent of the global economy and when they left it was only 5 per cent.
Five is less than twenty so clearly, British rule diminished the economy, right?
Well, actually, no, that is not quite right.
It is certainly possible that it did but that statement above is not proof of that contention.
For the Indian (and, obviously, we mean here the entire sub-continent, all of what is now India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh) economy was significantly larger in 1947 than it was in 1757, the time of the battle of Plassey - which was, as a useful guide, when the Brits moved from being simply traders to at least partial rulers.
What actually happened was that the economy of the rest of the world grew faster than that of India over that period of time.
Therefore, India was a smaller part of the global economy.
Think on it for a moment, in 1757 the US was a couple of million people in villages on the Eastern seaboard of America.
In 1947 it was the world bestriding colossus.
That is going to make even merely constant economies smaller as a portion of the whole global one, is it not?
There is a closely allied claim about the impoverishment of India under, or by, the British. Which is that GDP was lower at the moment of leaving than upon arrival.
This also is not true – or rather numbers are being manipulated in order to confuse. GDP per capita was indeed slightly lower in 1947 than it was in 1757.
But there were hundreds of millions more people at that latter date. Which means – for GDP is, obviously, GDP per capita times the number of capitas – GDP was some 3 times higher.
What actually happened is that India continued with Malthusian growth rather than that led by technological progress.
This is how growth had been all over the world until around and about 1700 and it's the way it continued to be in much of it. The only thing we know of that shocks an economy out of it is to have an industrial revolution.
What happens in such Malthusian growth is that yes, technology advances but slowly.
So, more food is available – we're talking about largely agricultural economies here – and so more children survive.
The end effect is that we end up with the population growth overwhelming the economic growth and so our final position is just more people at the same old, and low, standard of living.
This is not specific to India or colonies. It was true of everywhere up to about that 1700.
It was true of most places after it. It was true of China, which was not colonised by Europeans, of India which was, of Ethiopia uncolonised and Nigeria colonised.
It is possible to complain about British or other policies which between did not aid or even prevented that industrial revolution happening.
To the extent that those can be proven the critique is fair. But that India was a smaller portion of the world economy at the end is not proof, nor is that GDP per capita was about the same (or perhaps 5 per cent or so lower).
This is though vastly more important than just some muttering over the iniquities of history. Or even the actions of evil pinkish people like me.
If it is not in fact colonialism that was the cause of the economic standstill in standards of living then being free of it will not be the solution.
Or, at least, being free of it won't be a sufficient solution although we can always argue, if we should so wish, that it is a necessary one.
If it is the absence of an industrial revolution that is the cause then the necessity is to have one of those.
Of course, most of us do grasp this but not all. There are still some who seem to think that we can climb to the status of developed nation while still having 50, or 70 per cent, of the population scraping a living on half and one hectare farms.
This just is not going to work though.
The only way to get GDP per capita to move up fast enough to beat population growth is to have near everyone working in offices and factories.
That is the historical experience of everywhere so far at least.
We just do not know any other way of doing it.
That is, economic history is important because it tells us what works. Colonialism not so much, that is entirely fair to say.
It did not make places poorer even if it might have delayed their getting richer. But that is all in that past – the actual lesson from that past is that the only way to become developed is to have one of those industrial revolutions.
Which, fortunately, Bangladesh is having and it is, like so many of them, textiles and clothing led.
Tim Worstall is a Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
