In his narrative-defining book, Era of India, Minhaz Merchant examines interlinked civilizational arcs across centuries and millennia. Through much of recorded history, living standards were broadly similar in the Old World: Europe, Asia and Africa.
The discovery of the New World in the Americas and Australasia brought about great change: catastrophic for some, a boon for others. Differences in per capita income between Europeans and Asians were minimal in 1600. By 1900, the gap had risen multiple times. Europe emerged from plague and penury to great wealth.
Was this extraordinary turn of events due to scientific discoveries, the Industrial Revolution and technological innovation? Or did centuries of exploitative, invasive colonialism, the 250-year-long transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas, and colonist-settlements in the New World result in the largest transfer in history of wealth from East to West? Crucially, is it time for the West to pay reparations for three centuries of extra-territorial colonial conquest and enslavement?
Using empirical data and deeply researched documented evidence, Minhaz Merchant answers these questions in a riveting narrative that examines how the rise of India from an impoverished British colony in 1947 to the world’s third largest economy by 2030 will reshape the world order in the next quarter century
