ven. In 1700, India possessed a highly developed culture and a wealthy but largely pre-modern economy which suffered from political disunity and lacked the technological base needed to preserve its independence. Unlike Canada, the impact of British colonial rule on India's economy was mixed. Traditional pre-industrial patterns were disrupted as the British reshaped India's trading relationships with the West. The introduction of modern technology and methods of production created a rudimentary transportation and communications infrastructure, irrigation, education and other modern improvements. However, Indian net economic growth remained slight during the 19th and early 20th centuries, as advances in agriculture and the beginnings of industrialization were offset by population growth and colonial transfers. Independence was gained in 1947 only after a long, protracted and divisive struggle. By the end of the 1970s, efforts by India's new leaders to achieve rapid industrialization through massive state intervention in, and control of the economy, had helped create a substantial industrial base. However, overall growth was stymied by intractable problems associated with rural poverty, population increase, religious and ethnic divisions and serious problems of governance.
1700-1800 Struggle for Survival. Most of Canada's huge land mass, all of which was covered by ice until 10,000 years ago, did not lend itself to economic development, but the country is blessed in its southern portions with a temperate climate and rich, arable soil, the great fisheries off Newfoundland and British Columbia and the fur trade of the interior developed by explorers such as Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain who first explored the St. Lawrence Valley in the 16th and early 17th century, extensive timber resources and mineral deposits, the agricultural breadbasket in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes regions and the western prairie and abundant che...