Pre-Colonial Warfare and Long-Run Development in India
72 Pages Posted: 12 Jun 2020 Last revised: 24 Dec 2020
Mark Dincecco
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
James Fenske
University of Warwick
Anil Menon
University of Michigan
Shivaji Mukherjee
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Yale University
Date Written: December 22, 2020
Abstract
We analyze the relationship between pre-colonial warfare and long-run development patterns in India. We construct a new geocoded database of historical interstate conflicts on the Indian subcontinent, from which we compute measures of local exposure to pre-colonial warfare. We document a positive and significant relationship between pre-colonial conflict exposure and local economic development across India today. This result is robust to numerous checks, including controls for geographic endowments, initial state capacity, colonial-era institutions, ethnic and religious fractionalization, and colonial and post-colonial conflict, and an instrumental variables analysis that exploits variation in pre-colonial conflict exposure driven by cost distance to the Khyber Pass. Drawing on archival and secondary data, we show that districts that were more exposed to pre-colonial conflict experienced greater local pre-colonial and colonial-era state-making, and less political violence and higher infrastructure investments in the long term.
Keywords: Warfare, Economic Development, State Capacity, Public Goods, India, History
JEL Classification: N45, O11, P48, H11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Mark Dincecco (Contact Author)
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor ( email )
HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/umich.edu/dincecco
James Fenske
University of Warwick ( email )
Gibbet Hill Rd.
Coventry, CV4 8UW
United Kingdom
Anil Menon
University of Michigan ( email )
Shivaji Mukherjee
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto ( email )
100 St. George St
Sidney Smith Hall
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8
Canada
Yale University ( email )
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