Book Review: Era of India: From Impoverished Colony to the World’s Third-Largest Economy by Minhaz Merchant

• Argues history is circling back to Asia after four centuries of Western dominance

• Frames 2050 as an era of transformative technology and shifting global power

• Reassesses Western progress alongside colonialism, slavery, and violence

• Examines China’s rise and internal constraints

• Presents India as a unique, non‑colonial model of global ascendancy

Minhaz Merchant’s Era of India is a sweeping, provocative examination of global history, power, and economic transformation, anchored in the argument that the long arc of history is bending back toward Asia. Drawing on economics, geopolitics, technology, and civilisational narratives, Merchant contends that the dominance of the West over the past four centuries was an exception rather than the rule—and that the coming decades will restore Asia, particularly India and China, to positions of central global influence.

The book opens with a bold assertion: history has come full circle. For millennia, Asia led the world economically, scientifically, and culturally, only to be eclipsed by Europe and later the United States after 1800. Merchant places this Western ascent in the context of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, and slavery, noting how the nineteenth and twentieth centuries radically transformed human life through epoch-making inventions—from electricity and antibiotics to computers and the internet. Yet, he argues, even these astonishing advances will pale beside the changes likely to occur by 2050, driven by breakthroughs in life sciences, generative AI, space exploration, and telecommunications. The future, Merchant suggests, will feel as alien to us as self-driving cars and neural implants would have seemed to people in 1900.

At the geopolitical level, Merchant foresees a world shaped primarily by three powers: the United States, China, and India. Europe, though wealthy, is portrayed as strategically diminished by internal fragmentation and the erosion of the Atlantic alliance. This transition leads Merchant to pose a central moral and historical question: how should we evaluate the “balance sheet” of Western civilisation? He acknowledges the West’s philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements—from Plato and Aristotle to Shakespeare and Pasteur—but insists these cannot be separated from the violence and exploitation that accompanied Western expansion. Colonialism, transatlantic slavery, and territorial conquest were not incidental to Western prosperity; they were foundational.

China occupies a complex place in Merchant’s narrative. He recognises the extraordinary success of China’s post-1979 economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping, carefully detailing how liberalisation transformed agricultural output, rural incomes, and overall GDP. Yet he is sharply critical of Xi Jinping’s leadership, characterising it as the most hardline since Mao. Merchant argues that Xi’s repression at home, strategic opacity, and ambition to reunify Taiwan—an island critical to global semiconductor supply chains—pose serious risks, not just to regional stability but to China’s own rise. He underscores that China’s slowing growth, ageing population, and US-led technology embargo may yet constrain Beijing’s ambitions.

India, however, emerges as the book’s moral and historical counterpoint. Merchant presents India’s rise as unprecedented: a major power achieving global prominence without colonising other nations, enslaving distant populations, or committing overseas genocide. In contrast to Europe, the US, and China, India’s ascent is framed as non-acquisitive, rooted in demographic scale, democratic continuity, and economic integration rather than territorial conquest. This, Merchant argues, challenges deeply ingrained assumptions about how power is accumulated.

A recurring theme in Era of India is the critique of Western historical narratives. Merchant highlights how non-Western contributions to mathematics, science, and culture are routinely marginalised, while the atrocities inflicted on indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australia are often downplayed. He is particularly unsparing in his assessment of American power, tracing its wealth through slavery, territorial expansion, and decades of military intervention abroad.

Ultimately, Era of India is not a neutral chronicle but a forceful reinterpretation of global history. Merchant argues that nations rise and fall toward their “natural level,” and that a 400-year tide of Western dominance is receding. Whether one agrees fully with his conclusions or not, the book is a challenging, wide-ranging, and timely meditation on power, prejudice, and the shifting centre of the world economy.

Cover image courtesy, Saurabh Singh