Economic and social problems of new states

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Dependence on primary exports, underdevelopment (little home industry) and weak infrastructure built to serve the coloniser rather than local people.

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Selling raw materials — like cotton, sugar or minerals — rather than manufactured goods, which left economies exposed to world price swings.

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An economy kept weak and unindustrialised because it was shaped to serve a colonial power rather than to grow local industry.

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Illiteracy, disease and poor health, unequal land distribution, and the challenge of integrating diverse populations.

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A small class of landowners held most good land while millions of peasants had little or none, fuelling demands for land reform.

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British India split into mainly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan; 10–15 million people were displaced and communal violence killed hundreds of thousands.

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State economic targets set every five years (from 1951) directing investment into heavy industry — steel, dams, factories — to escape export dependence.

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They built real industrial foundations (dams, steel, universities) but growth stayed modest and mass poverty fell only slowly.

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Prolonged independence wars in the 1810s–1820s wrecked mines, farms, livestock and trade routes.

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A system of large landed estates worked by poor, often unfree, labourers that survived after independence and kept land and power with a small elite.

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It barely changed structurally — the new states still exported raw materials and relied on foreign trade and capital, shifting reliance from Spain to Britain.

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India actively planned toward industry (Five-Year Plans) and made slow progress; Spanish America largely kept the old export economy and hacienda system, overcoming far less.