India's indirect contribution to Western Science

In England the law of primogeniture (all property to the eldest heir) prevailed, so the younger sons were left to fend for themselves. England being a small island, colonialism became inevitable to extradite  the surplus population. Also as Stendhal's classic novel's title "The Red & the Black", itself says, the choice of professions for the middle class was restricted to the army (& navy) & the Church. But the silver lining was that the affluent educated remaining at home had enough leisure to think constructively & a lucky few came up with epoch-making inventions like James Watt's steam engine, William Harvey's circulation of blood, Joseph Lister's sterilisation (antiseptic) to reduce deaths during surgery & many others.

Added to this wealth being concentrated in few hands, wealth also poured in from the colonies, sent by the extradited surplus population of younger sons. Adam Smith, the Scottish economist writes in his seminal work "The Wealth of Nations" that the conduct of the servants of the erstwhile East India Company in India became a subject of parliamentary enquiry. So as a result, in 1773 new regulations were formed, not withstanding which their depredations over a vast accession of the most fertile & richest areas of India continued.

So this pre-eminence in path-breaking scientific inventions, occurring during the period of colonisation, gave a flying start to the British prosperity, mainly fuelled by the wealth transported from India, which replaced North America (which declared itself as independent in 1783) as the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire. So India may be viewed as the (unwilling?) venture capitalist to British enterprise.