Colonial trade and agriculture

Colonial rule rewrote India's place in world trade: from an exporter of fine textiles and a major manufacturing economy, India became an exporter of raw materials and an importer of British manufactures. Agriculture was reshaped in the same process, as land revenue demand, commercial crops and global prices pulled peasants into markets they did not control. A concrete example is indigo in Bengal and Bihar: peasants forced to grow indigo for European planters at fixed low prices revolted in the Indigo Rebellion of 1859–60.