India has played an important role in recent debates on the development of agriculture during colonial rule, and on the performance of US cotton plantations during the nineteenth century. The debates suffer from a lack of quantitative evidence on the productivity of Indian cotton cultivation. In this article, we examine levels of land and labour productivity in cotton cultivation in nineteenth-century India, and compare this data with corresponding productivity figures from the US. Average yields in India were much lower than previous research would suggest, and trends were generally stagnant or even negative. The difference between the cost of labour in India and the US was also lower than previous research would suggest.

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从比较的角度看 19 世纪印度殖民统治下的棉花种植

印度在最近关于殖民统治时期农业发展以及 19 世纪美国棉花种植园绩效的辩论中发挥了重要作用。由于缺乏关于印度棉花种植生产力的定量证据，争论受到影响。在本文中，我们考察了 19 世纪印度棉花种植的土地和劳动生产率水平，并将这些数据与美国相应的生产率数据进行了比较。印度的平均单产远低于先前研究表明的水平，而且趋势普遍停滞不前，甚至为负。印度和美国的劳动力成本差异也低于之前的研究结果。