ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF CANADA AND INDIA (1700-1970s)
This research paper summarizes and compares the historical development of the Canadian and Indian economies during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries (through the 1970s) and discusses the major factors which facilitated or impeded progress.
In the 20th century Canada emerged as a major, sophisticated and balanced industrial economy with high per capita income. The foundations of growth were laid in previous centuries. Canada's precarious early settlement survived due to assistance from its rival mercantilist mother countries, France, and, after 1763, Great Britain. Its ties to Britain's dynamically expanding domestic and foreign trade economy resulting from the commercial revolution of the 18th century and the industrial revolution of the 19th century enabled Eastern and Central Canada to develop their natural resources and to start down the road to industrialization. Other benefits included international peace, domestic political stability and the peaceful achievement of independence, largely achieved by 1867, the tentative resolution of Anglo-French ethnic tensions and federal-provincial strains and the adaptation of political, economic, legal and cultural institutions conducive to growth. These factors, together with massive immigration and capital and technology imports, fueled Canada's westward expansion and the exploitation of its vast mineral and agricultural resources in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sustained industrialization was spurred by the wealth thus created, the effects of two world wars, and the expansion of world trade and investment during most of the 20th century. On balance, Canada gained economically from its proximity to its American neighbor. By the 1970s, the distribution of the nation's wealth and the problem of French-speaking separatism were the major issues.
India's path toward economic development has been much more tortured and une...