Economic Conditions in Early Modern Bengal: A Contribution to the Divergence Debate (original) (raw)
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Journal of the Economic and Social History …, 2009
India's position in the Great Divergence debate has remained tentative due to scanty data availability for the medieval and early modern periods. In the years 1800-01, Dr. Francis Buchanan conducted one of the first agricultural surveys in the erstwhile state of Mysore and its adjoining regions. His Journey contains a wealth of information, both quantitative and qualitative, which has not been studied systematically so far. This paper brings together the information scattered throughout his report to construct an aggregate welfare ratio in order to ascertain the overall living standard in Mysore at the turn of the nineteenth century, the eve of colonial intervention in the state. The results from this study have interesting and important implications for the Great Divergence debate.
Dr Amita Gupta, Paramjit Kaur, 2023
The history of European trade in Asia pre-date the discovery of the Cape route by the Portuguese, but undoubtedly this new route gave the thrust in extensive and bulk trading, especially when two north Atlantic powers joined the Portuguese, namely the Dutch and English East India companies. On the other hand, Bengal as a Mughal' subah' already had a rich and prosperous mercantile culture where Bengali traders were engaged with Sumatra, Malay, Java, Arab, Persia and China. Bengal also had a rich geographical and environmental advantage in the form of numerous navigable water channels and conducive weather for agriculture, which made agricultural produce surplus and other job options possible, thus creating a large body of artisans, weavers, bankers, merchants etc. With the Portuguese involved in the trade of the Bay of Bengal, its products reached Europe and over the years, there was a market-ready in Europe for certain kinds of products from Bengal, namely textiles and silk. This vast European market with meagre supply made Dutch and English enthused to enter the Asian market, and their vigorous and disciplined way of functions, very different from Portuguese unruly, powerdriven and disruptive nature, made them successful in small time. Slowly, the composition of goods exported from Bengal changed based on the heightened demand of Europe. With an already established local banking and financial system, this gave Bengal its most prosperous two hundred years, when European import reached its peak in return for bullion and gold. This is a collection of review papers based on secondary sources where we inquire into the world of economy, trade, communication, and industrialization-European as well as indigenous, the interconnection and interdependence between different political and economic forces in Bengal in the period under review.
The transition from ancient to medieval in Bengal's monetary realms
Abdul Momin Chowdhury (ed.), History of Bangladesh, Sultanate and Mughal Periods (c. 1200 to 1800 CE). Vol. 2, Society, Economy, Culture. Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2020
Published in Abdul Momin Chowdhury (ed.), History of Bangladesh, Sultanate and Mughal Periods (c. 1200 to 1800 CE). Vol. 2, Society, Economy, Culture. Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2020, pp. 129-40.
BENGAL VILLAGES AS SEEN BY THE FOREIGNERS (14TH–17TH CENTURIES AD
Bengal is the largest delta of the world where villages occupy an important position as human settlement. Historians and social scientists have explored different aspects of urban life in the history of Bengal. But villages remain almost out of their focus. European scholars began research on Bengal villages at the beginning of the colonial rule. Most of these research studies based on the gazetteers, census reports and district reports were published for the smooth operation of the revenue system and administrative structure. Our present knowledge on pre-colonial Bengal villages is mainly based on these colonial records. This paper tries to explore various aspects of Bengal villages during fourteen-seventeenth centuries using the foreigners accounts as primary sources. Most of the foreigners, who came during the period under review, were travelers and traders. They have visited various areas of Bengal and left a vivid description about the rural areas. Using these descriptions this paper concludes that the general pattern of villages in Bengal has not changed over a long time. Villages have historically played a very important role in the nourishment of human culture in Bengal. 1 Although several urban centers flourished in different areas of Bengal, villages have continued to be the heart of all human activities in this deltaic land. European scholars started the study of rural Bengal after the acquisition of the Diwani (in 1765) by the British East India Company. Before the promulgation of the Permanent Settlement 2 in 1793 several commissions were formed to study the state of revenue collection in this region. Many Reports and Minutes were published where a variety of issues were discussed on rural Bengal.
Agrarian Expansion and Rural Commercialization in Early Medieval North Bengal
Osmund Bopearachchi and Suchandra Ghosh (eds), Early Indian History and Beyond: Essays in Honour of B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Delhi: Primus Books, 2019, pp.155-174.pp., 2019
Agrarian Expansion and rural commercialization may sound contradictory, especially for scholars who support the construct of Indian Feudalism and its core theory of urban decay. The condition of early medieval north Bengal appears to conform to the model of urban decay. Both urban centres and their mercantile elites, which loomed large in the fifth- and sixth-centuries land sale grants, are conspicuous by their absence in the early medieval inscriptions. Coined currency, often connected with commerce as a medium of exchange, is also absent, in contrast to the circulation of Gupta gold and silver coins, attested by the inscriptions of the earlier period. A careful reading of the inscriptions, however, leads to an alternative interpretation-the commercialization of rural society accompanying the expansion of sedentary agriculture and agrarian settlements, all of which saw another phase of progress from the ninth century onwards. This essay discusses the process through a reappraisal of epigraphic and textual sources.
Economic History of Early Modern India: A response
Modern Asian Studies, 2015
The review article onEconomic History of Early Modern India(Routledge, London, 2013;Economic Historyfrom now on) by Shami Ghosh is both a review of the book and a series of arguments about how eighteenth-century Indian history should be interpreted. These arguments suggest a few hypotheses about the pattern of economic change in this time (1707–1818), which are presented as an alternative to what the book thinks it is possible to claim, given the current state of knowledge. In pursuing the second objective, which is to seek fresh interpretation, Ghosh recommends reconnecting Indian regions with global economic history more firmly than is in evidence in the book. Overall, the article subjects the book to a close reading, and outlines a research programme that will surely help further the discourse on the eighteenth century.