travellers’ negative comments on India it is not clear how or why we should
trust so much to the judgement of this positive (British) commentator. In
making his case that rice cultivation was ‘secure’ he argues that harvest short-
falls in South India were highly localized and did not lead to the kinds of crises
common in Britain. This evidence is belied by the occurrence of famine well
into the nineteenth century, even after the construction of the railway system.
More than a million people died in Orissa in 1865–66, the Deccan in 1876–78,
North-West Provinces in 1877–78, and in the countrywide famine of 1896–97.
Empirical evidence for contemporary India shows that the monsoon is highly
variable and through its impact on agricultural output influences all-India
industrial growth (Gadgil and Gadgil, 2006). Parthasarathi excludes data on
wages in London, which, by dropping the most dynamic (the population of
London increased from 50,000 in 1500 to 1million in 1800) and high-wage
corner of the English textile industry, leaves average wages in the rest much
lower.
The traditional view of Japan is of a country that isolated itself from the
outside world in the 1630s, fearing the influence of foreign Jesuit missionar-
ies and the growing (300,000 by the mid-sixteenth century) number of
Christians. Between 1639 and 1853 only the Dutch were allowed to trade with
Japan and even they were confined to a small artificial island in the harbour of
Nagasaki. This, it is argued, left Japan cut off from technological progress in
printing,textiles (silk and cotton), military equipment and agriculture. In June
1853 a US navy contingent of four warships entered Tokyo Bay with a request
from the US President for a treaty of friendship and commerce. In March
1854 the US returned with nine ships and Japan agreed a treaty which opened
two ports to foreign ships for supplies and repairs. Soon after, Japan signed
treaties allowing widespread trade with numerous Western nations
(Maddison,2007). The traditional narrative is that the following era (known
as the Meiji Restoration) from the mid-1860s saw the Japanese state force
modernization from above. Reforms included the establishment of a profes-
sional army and civil service, formal legal equality between different social
classes, the protection of private property, compulsory primary schooling and
the expansion of the university system. By the 1880s the state was responsi-
ble for about 40 per cent of all capital formation, some of which went into
infrastructure (railways, telegraph, roads) and much into directly productive
enterprises (mills to produce cotton and silk, factories to produce bricks,
cement, glass, and mines). Once established, many of these enterprises were
sold to the private sector (Maddison, 2007). The conventional view that Japan
successfully industrialized by emulating the West has been challenged by
revisionists who argue that Japan had built a foundation for the agricultural
and industrial growth that occurred from the 1870s onwards. There is good
evidence of significant growth in agricultural production before the 1850s.
Land productivity increased due to innova tions in fertilizer use, increased rice
varieties, more irrigation to spread paddy agriculture, greater regional crop
specialization and multiple cropping, and an increase in cash-crop production
152 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth