Trade Shocks and Pro-democracy Mass Movements: Evidence from India's Independence Struggle

Abstract: We provide the first systematic evidence on the relative importance of economic factors in mobilizing the Indian subcontinent's remarkably diverse population into one of the world's first mass political movements in favor of democratic self-government. We show that residents of exports-producing districts that were negatively impacted by inter-war trade shocks, including the Great Depression, were more likely to support the Congress, the party of independence, in 1937 and 1946 and more likely to engage in violent insurrection in the Quit India rebellion of 1942. However, districts experiencing both positive and extreme negative shocks were associated with lowered support. Further, violent resistance was greater in districts with a greater share of non-cultivating landowners. We interpret our results as inconsistent with a ``peasant rebellion" interpretation of mass mobilization. Instead we suggest that negative world trade shocks reduced the benefits to India's rural labourers of openness to world trade and trade intermediation by non-cultivating landowners, making more attractive the deal, offered by Congress's industrialist supporters, for post-Independence trade protectionism in exchange for land reforms that democratic rule helped make credible.