never_rains t1_iuers3z wrote on October 30, 2022 at 7:49 PM

Reply to comment by andtheywontstopcomin in Fall of the East India Company by Vailhem

Wikipedia says that princely states occupied 40% of the area and 23% of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princely_state

British India was on average better than an average princely state. But there were few states like Travancore which performed better than British India. Tirthankar Roy has a really good book on it.

andtheywontstopcomin t1_iuevyh4 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 8:16 PM

Can you elaborate?

I’m pretty sure the princely states outside of the nizams had higher GDP per capita than the Raj. Mysore (or maybe it was travancore) for example had electricity while the rest of the Raj was basically in poverty

Not to mention that nearly all industry in india collapsed when the British took over and there was a huge efflux of people from cities into rural areas. So rural poverty became a huge problem