SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: "If India had 25% of world GDP it would have easily defeated the East India Company."

https://x.com/nxt888/status/2053167071987638619

"If India had 25% of world GDP it would have easily defeated the East India Company."

Kyle this sentence reveals that you do not know how the East India Company actually conquered India and I need you to understand this before the conversation can go anywhere.

The Company did not defeat India in a straight military contest between Europe and India. That is not what happened.

What happened:

The Mughal Empire was in political fragmentation.

Regional powers, the Marathas, the Nawabs of Bengal, the Nizam of Hyderabad, were in conflict with each other.

The Company did not defeat Indian wealth.

It inserted itself into Indian political conflict, backed one faction against another, extracted concessions from whoever it helped win, and used those concessions to fund the next round of expansion.

At the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the battle that effectively handed Bengal to the Company, Robert Clive led roughly 3,000 Company soldiers.

The Nawab had 50,000.

Clive won because he had already bribed the Nawab's own commander-in-chief, Mir Jafar, to keep his entire army standing still when the battle began.

This is not European military genius defeating Indian economic power.

This is a trading company exploiting a political betrayal.

GDP does not prevent betrayal, my friend.

Fragmented political authority does not automatically consolidate to repel a sufficiently opportunistic external actor.

The British did not defeat Indian wealth.

They captured Indian political fragmentation and used it to redirect Indian wealth toward Britain.

That is a completely different story than the one your argument assumes.

Quote

Kyle Choi 崔凯尔

@KCDN19

Replying to @nxt888

If India actually had 25% of the world's GDP, it would have easily defeated the British East India Company. The idea that Europe was poor but was able to project power in far-flung places magically is an overcorrection against Eurocentrism. Europe had surplus economic capacity.