Accounting for the nation, marginalising the empire: taxable capacity and colonial rule in the early twentieth-century

Newbigin, Eleanor

Abstract

Modern forms of national accounting are widely understood to have emerged within the context of rivalry between the western powers and attempts to manage the economic fall out of World War I. There has been little consideration of the way in which imperialism shaped debates and approaches to national accounting. Providing a close reading of Indian scholar K.T. Shah’s intervention in debates about how to measure the national economy of the 1920s, this paper seeks to shed new light on innovative debates within Indian economics in this period. In so doing, it also seeks to draw attention to the ways in which debates about national economy were themselves a site of contestation, and reaffirmation, of colonial power structures in the interwar years.

Citation

Newbigin, E. (2020). Accounting for the nation, marginalising the empire: taxable capacity and colonial rule in the early twentieth-century. History of Political Economy, 52(3), 455-472. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-8304791

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 8, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jun 1, 2020
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 24, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 24, 2019
• Journal: History of Political Economy
• Print ISSN: 0018-2702
• Electronic ISSN: 1527-1919
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 52
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 455-472
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-8304791