India's GDP in past

Here is an interesting comparision of GDP of the indian subcontinent in the ancient days - compared with the rest of the world!GDP In Million Dollars

Year 1000 1500 1600 1700
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India 33.8 60.5 74.3 90.8
China 26.6 61.8 96.0 82.8
Western Europe 10.2 44.3 66.0 83.4
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World Total 116.8 247.1 329.4 371.4

Notice that China reached the heights, that no one touched!Of course you will wonder GDP was calculated for those ancient years as the definitions and values of worthness and money must have changed a lot since then.

The researchers Angus Maddison and Donald Johnston have studied numerous resources and derived historical world gross GDP totals by assembling evidence on changes in population, retaining the 1990 international dollar as the temporal and spatial anchor in the estimation of movements in GDP and per capita GDP and filling in the evidence with proxy estimates.

For more information here are links:

For more information here are links:

Prof Maddison's website

Amazon link to the book

PM Manmohan singh's speach referring to the research