India and the Great Divergence: Assessing the efficiency of grain markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: University of Oxford
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050708000351
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 393-437
• 关键词: integration; prices; Europe; wages

摘要

By analyzing a newly compiled data base of grain prices, this article finds that prior to the nineteenth century the grain trade in India was essentially local, while more distant markets remained fragmented. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth century that these premodern structures were transformed, and a national grain market had emerged. In the Great Divergence debate, the California School's claim that early modem Asia reached a similar stage of economic development as early modem Europe is therefore rejected for India.