To revive India's industries

The global and imperial roots of swadeshi in the nineteenth century

Bibliographic Data

ID3608727
AuthorsDhiru Patel (0000-0003-3395-4030, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume58
Issue3
Pages686-716
Publication date2024-05-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x24000350
OpenAlexW4404667870
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited21

This article explores the long roots of swadeshi (economic self-reliance) in nineteenth-century India, focusing on attempts at industrial revival through pedagogical institutions, exhibitions, and associations. These roots, which influenced the Swadeshi Movement and Gandhian swadeshi activity in the early twentieth century, demonstrate how it is impossible to understand swadeshi without taking an extensive global perspective. Indian thinkers engaged in contemporary global economic debates and with British imperial deliberations on free trade and protection; they fine-tuned comparative perspectives on the Indian economy through international travel and their readings of global history. In a similar spirit, Indians forged core swadeshi techniques through observing associational, institutional, and technological innovations across the British empire and the wider world. History was a powerful motivating force. Popular conceptions of deindustrialization under colonial rule fired Indians' imaginations about a past when the country was a global powerhouse for manufactured exports-and directly stimulated specific swadeshi endeavours. Situated at the confluence of profit-making and patriotism, swadeshi enterprise in the nineteenth century created some unexpected alliances: between Britons and Indians, colonial officials and nationalists, and urban intellectuals and small-town entrepreneurs

Ancient history · Economic history · Political science · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Indian Economic and Social Development

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