following contact the native Taino population of the island of Hispaniola (esti-
mated population between 60,000 and 8 million) was virtually extinct. The
population of central Mexico fell from nearly 15 million in 1519 to approxi-
mately 1.5 million a century later (Nunn and Qian, 2010). The estimated
mortality from starvation and disease in British India exceeded 1 million in
Orissa 1865–66, in the Deccan 1876–78, and North-west Provinces 1877–78,
and in the countrywide famines of 1896–97 (when an estimated 4.5 million
died) and 1899–90. The Orissa famine was clearly a pre-modern famine as
crops failed in an area without roads and ports and the region could not receive
supplies from outside. The 1868–69 famine in the North-west Frontier was in
an area well supplied by railways, which refuted the notion that railways would
automatically alleviate famine conditions. During famines, in 1875 British
Indian ports exported 1.22 million tons of food grains and in 1895 about 2.49
million tons (Habib, 2006). In India, unlike the Americas, claims of genocide
are rarely heard and deaths from famine are usually attributed to the ignorance
or mistakes of the colonial state.
Over the longer term there was a clear (but not universal) neglect of general
education in the colonies. The main purpose of the colonial education system
in Africa,argues Walter Rodney, was to train Africans to help man the local
administration: it was an education for subordination, exploitation, creation of
mental confusion, and development of underdevelopment (1972:241). Or,as
Franz Fanon argued:
The colonialist bourgeoisie,in its narcissistic dialogue, expounded by
members of the universities, had in fact deeply implanted in the minds of the
colonised intellectual that the essential qualities remain eternal in spite of
all the blunders men may make:the essential qualities of the West, of
course. The native intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas, and
deep down in his brain you could always find a vigilant sentinel ready to
defend the Graeco-Latin pedestal. (2001:36)In 1938 in French West Africa there were 77,000 pupils from a population of
15 million. At independence the Congo had only 16 graduates from a popula-
tion of 16 million. South Korea was different; the number of students attending
school increased from 10,000 in 1910 to 1.7 million in 1941 and in 1945 the
literacy rate reached 50 per cent. Nevertheless there has been criticism that the
goal was not to instil freedom of thought and debate but to raise productivity in
the labour force. More general indicators of human development in colonial
Korea were pessimistic. Newspapers were suspended or heavily censored,
political protest was dealt with swiftly. Wage growth lagged behind productiv-
ity gains, facilitating higher profits. Increases in food production did not lead
to increases in food consumption, rather to more exports. Attempts to create
unions were prohibited and there were few laws to regulate the workplace and
protect workers. 80 per cent of the workers at Kyongbangs textile mill, for
example,were unmarried peasant girls in their late teens, many recruited from
202 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth