Abstract
By analysing a newly compiled data base of grain prices, this
article finds that prior to the nineteenth century the grain trade in India was
essentially local, while more distant markets remained fragmented. It was only
in the second half of the nineteenth century that market integration
accelerated, so that by the end of the century a national grain market had
emerged. The paper also contributes to the comparative great divergence debate,
in that it rejects, for India,
the claim of the California School of ‘Asia’ having reached a similar stage
of economic development as Europe before the
late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. In a larger context, this
contribution can thus be seen as part of the larger counterrevolution against
the iconoclasm of the California
School.