I think reddit is more the space for you; hacker news tends to be for people who like data; not arguments plucked from your brain. From wikipedia:<p>Number of Looms in UK
Year	1803	1820	1829	1833	1857
Looms	2400	14650	55500	100000	250000<p>Tell me how increasing your manufacturing base 104x in 50 years is possible without above average returns on capital in textiles? Were the British industrialists stupid? Did they just want to compete each other out of existence? Or perhaps they had a captive subjugated market where people were not even allowed to produce salt, let alone textiles.<p>Your argument that India would not have &quot;kept up&quot; is based on pure conjecture. Also, every respected economic historian writes that India would have been better off without colonialism. Transfer of technology doesn&#x27;t have to coincide with being invaded. Eg. Japan.