Imperialism, Gold Standard and the Colonised

It is an honour to be asked to contribute a paper to this special issue of Social Scientist on the occasion of Professor Irfan Habib’s ninetieth birthday. The seminal academic influences on the development of some aspects of my own ideas from the time I was a research student in the late 1960s, have been Professor Irfan Habib and Professor Amiya K. Bagchi.