That&#x27;s prior to the industrial revolution compared to after the industrial revolution. It&#x27;s the same story with India, Russia and China - during that period the global economy shifted from being overwhelmingly defined by agriculture and other products of manual labour (and therefore being heavily dependent on population) to being defined by industrial production. Britain treated India as an extractive economy, were involved in many abuses and crimes, and certainly held back India&#x27;s development (the lack of literacy even in the 1940&#x27;s is the most clear-cut example), but it&#x27;s an enormous stretch to say that India under the Mughals or the other regional rulers would suddenly have made India into an industrial superpower.<p>You can see in Russia, in the absence of any colonialism, the enormous struggle which there was to transform an economy dependent on manual labour, and with an elite dependent on feudal social structures, into a modern economy. I would separate the issues of abuses&#x2F;crimes and the issues of development in the sense that the abuses were perpetrated due to moral failings, of power-hunger, racism, and greed, but development is not just about morality, it&#x27;s about having the right policy and the right trajectory for society. In terms of development, the really damaging attitude was that India&#x27;s ancient culture should not be disturbed to make way for industrialization, and this was an opinion shared by many well-meaning British and also Indians, pre and post independence.