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The review article on Economic History of Early Modern India (Routledge, London, 2013; Economic History from now on) by Shami Ghosh is both a review of the book and a series of arguments about how eighteenth-century Indian history should be interpreted. These arguments suggest a few hypotheses about the pattern of economic change in this time (1707-1818), which are presented as an alternative to what the book thinks it is possible to claim, given the current state of knowledge. In pursuing the second objective, which is to seek fresh interpretation, Ghosh recommends reconnecting Indian regions with global economic history more firmly than is in evidence in the book. Overall, the article subjects the book to a close reading, and outlines a research programme that will surely help further the discourse on the eighteenth century.
But the review is not entirely fair to the book. Someone who reads the article before reading the book might conclude that the book is a bundle of assertions, perhaps motivated by a barely concealed ideological bias. On several occasions, Ghosh cites from the book out of context, bringing up contradictions where there are none, and overlooks my own grounds for making a general statement. The grounds almost always consist of a set of empirical propositions drawn from source-based research. Let me clarify the main aim of Economic History. It is a survey. As a survey it deals with the problem that, by-and-large, the archival research done on the eighteenth century does not ask economic history questions. And yet, it has relevance for debates in economic history. Therefore, the task before me is not only to answer questions, but also to decide what questions can be answered, that is, to identify the economic history themes for which the scholarship supplies some evidence. For the most part, debates on historiography have not been too mindful of this issue.
Three examples help explain the project. Did India experience economic growth or decline in the 1700s? This question does not have an answer, not only because in the 1700s India remains undefined as a unit of measurement, but also because we have too few acceptable statistics to settle the issue. Did agricultural productivity change in the eighteenth...