“China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years!”
I have heard about this before, heard the stories of Indian empires selling Gems in heaps, on footpath! One of them, (Vijayanagara Empire) had merchants bartering diamonds (dug in Golconda) with rice and wheat! Each one of those stones were described to be costing big fortunes, in the west. Looks like all true now, not in exact way.
I dint believe this in the beginning, hard to believe, isn’t it? How can such a country, just in 200 years, can come to this state ? All the laurels sung seemed exaggerations to me. As I explained earlier India is country of poets and philosophers, not historians and accountants. It’s hard to distinguish between history and poem.
Anyways, I found this cool info graphics, which paints world DGPs spread across two millenniums. I am searching for more statistical information on this, for personal interest, watch this space.
Credit for this compilation goes to Angus Maddison
The Bach 
yes, gold, diamonds have always been one of India’s most spoken exports. But i still don’t believe the vijayanagara story and seems to be faaaaaar from true. they were always precious. bulk exports which produced money could have been spices, cotton, silk and other textile items.
nevertheless, history of India and china are always a mystery to me. how could have a country/civilization evolved so fast in time? Growth of India reminds me of the capacitor charging curve of time Vs Volt.
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Noo, now it doesn’t seem far for me.
BTW gold and diamonds weren’t exports, they were internally consumed. Later they were loots, never exports.
I am not able to relate the last part to the graph you mentioned, are you referring to current progress or old ?
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