Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/ecnomichistoryof035299mbp#page/n7/mode/2up

Download pdf Book : http://ia700106.us.archive.org/11/items/ecnomichistoryof035299mbp/ecnomichistoryof035299mbp.pdf

Hey , looks great...the cover i mean! Lets see whats inside!

A volume of great value. (There is another volume and Prof Das's original lectures in "Kalikatta" university.) Strangely, the material or economic basis of human existence is glossed over by historians. Non-historians too jump to assume greatness, divinity as the meaning of their antiquity and invent reasons to justify their present day beliefs. It seems that historians as well as non-historians have a congenital weakness for the uncommon and the extraordinary. They generally dwell upon the cataclysmic factors in society like wars, aggressions and exaggerate the importance of the supermen - the heroes of history. Prof Das has argued that the normal and actual development of human society through the arts of peace and cooperation is overshadowed by the lurid clouds of war and political strife. To reestablish history on her true pedestal of truth and humanity every individual teacher and historian must immediately start work of expiation and search into the intimate relation that subsists between man and surrounding nature which has exerted most powerful influence on the evolution of human life and thought. I am putting the book on my must-read list.

@ SS Will get back to you in a day or two; am reading it just now!

A fascinating book. As Shekhar points out (above) economic factors are often neglected in historical research at the expense of more 'glamorous' social or political topics. Of particular interest to historians is the field known as "comparative" or "quantitative" economics. Within which, economic data from different centuries or even millenia is contrasted and compared and 'translated' into modern economic terms. By doing so a great deal is revealed about living standards, trade balances or inbalances across continents, GDP projections and so on from one era to the next. I have only recently become familiar with the work of Professor Angus Maddison, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison ) who many of you might have heard of previously. He was the acknowledged grandfather of this sort of research and he sadly passed away only last year. His work and the statistical models that he created based upon it ( eg. comparisons of the economy in , say,India in 1400, 1500, 1700, 1800 etc) are projections based on available resources/ records and 'trends' (especially demographic 'trends') that seem to follow predictable patterns. Clearly, this research is abstract to some degree, is not exact (simple, initial, numerical mistakes in calculations can completely change results over the course of 500 years !), utilises a certain amount of conjecture and is couched in the jargon of the modern world to enforce its relevance- but - it can suggest and define broad background themes with some degree of certainty. The depth and breadth of Maddison's endaevours, over a period of several decades, is really very impressive. The following link may provide an insight into the scope of his work and the methods and data that he used in compiling his research. There is much information here for those with a particular interest in the economic development of the Indian sub-continent over the centuries (although they have not been able to compile results as far back as the periods covered in the book by Santosh Das). http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/oriindex.htm

Found this interesting timeline of the Indian economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_economy_of_India. In 1700, India's economy had a 24.4% share of world income, the largest in the world, under Aurangzeb's Mughal Empire. But, by 1947, India's share had shrunk to just 3.8%. India went from having a self-sufficient and relatively stable economy to being perhaps one of the weakest economies in the world. Thus, as we can see there was a rather unprecedented economic decline caused by a number of factors. Would love to read more books on this topic!