Joan Robinson in Princely India

This chapter is the book's most personal and most engaging part, because the author tells the story of his own doctoral research. «The British Crown and the Indian States», published in 1929 on behalf of the Chamber of Princes without any author's name, had its political part written by the Indian diplomat and historian K. M. Panikkar, and — according to Panikkar's autobiography of 1979 — its economic part by «Mrs. Austin Robinson», that is, the young Joan Robinson. Tahir finds this sentence and concludes that it was Joan Robinson's first published work in economics — on poverty, backwardness and unjust fiscal arrangements.

The author tests his discovery cautiously, turning the chapter into a detective story. He considers the possibility of a misprint: Panikkar's autobiography was published by Oxford University Press, and in a corrected reprint at that. To show that «Mrs. Austin Robinson» was no error, he points out that Keynes's letters to Joan Robinson were also addressed to «Mrs. Austin Robinson». He then compares style: a certain assertiveness, impatience with detail, dismissive words like «nonsense» and «confusion» — all typical of Joan Robinson's later writing. The meticulous year-long reading of the work by his supervisor Geoff Harcourt gives added confidence.

«Not Such a Big Discovery After All» is the dramatic turning point. In 1988, a few weeks before the thesis was submitted, Joan Robinson's husband Austin Robinson stated that the main contribution to the economic part had been his. Tahir quotes in full the letter from William Brown, chair of the Cambridge Degree Committee, and his own reply: Brown finds the argument «pretty solid», but the external examiner John Toye disagrees and requires revisions. The author leaves Cambridge and, returning in 1990, drops the disputed material and writes a new paper on Joan Robinson's China connection. This candour is one of the book's most valuable qualities.

The chapter also has small but memorable details: that Panikkar's autobiography first appeared in 1954 in Malayalam; that when the author tried to travel to Kerala he learned foreigners were barred from the Communist-run state, and a Punjabi-speaking official told him, «We don't go there ourselves!»; and that a 1929 article signed «E. A. J. Robinson» may, the author suspects, have been a pseudonym combining Austin's and Joan's names.

From a critical point of view, the author is clearly partisan: he defends his discovery and compares Austin Robinson's claim with Austin's own remark that Keynes «was never sure which arguments were his and which were other people's». In later chapters readers learn that Alec Cairncross attributed authorship to Austin and that archival findings complicate the picture further, but the final verdict is left to them.

In the end, this chapter is the key to the whole project: the roots of Joan Robinson's later views on development economics, China and India are traced back to this early work. It is a rare glimpse of how scholarly research is built, contested and paid for personally. The rest of the book is more technical, but this chapter can hold even a non-economist's attention.

• Extensive quotations from archival documents, letters and interviews
• Detailed notes and references in every chapter
• Tables showing fiscal transfers
• Appendices on the Butler Report, a bibliography and an index