In What Way, and to What Degree, Did the Mughal State Inhibit Smithian Growth In India in the Seventeenth Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
How Should We Approach the Economy of ‘Early Modern India’? A Review Article
Modern Asian Studies, 2015
Tirthankar Roy’s recent synthesis on the economic history of early modern India claims to provide a new, overarching narrative placing this period within the broader sweep of the history of what Roy defines as ‘capitalism’ in India in the very long term. This paper provides a detailed critique of Roy’s monograph, suggesting that it suffers from some serious methodological deficits, arising not least from a future-oriented paradigm that imposes anachronistic concepts on this period, including the very notion of ‘India’. Furthermore, his view of the economy as being fundamentally driven forward by the rise of a coastal polity expanding inwards from Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, sits awkwardly with his repeated claim that colonialism was of little significance for Indian economic history. Finally, the present paper suggests that this period might be more fruitfully approached not only by abandoning the telos of what we know of India’s future, but also by adopting both regionally-focused and comparative approaches, turning away from long-distance trade as the primary lens through which to view the economy, and instead examining endogenous factors in the economies of individual regions and enriching our understanding of them by reference to studies of other world regions with comparable patterns of development in the same period. More nuanced ways of approaching economic change in the very long run, including the importance of developments in modes of consumption and market- and profit-oriented economic behaviour, are suggested as a better means of understanding both the economies of the late pre-colonial centuries in the Indian subcontinent, and the development of capitalism, which should also be understood in a more specific manner than Roy allows.
Merchants in the Rural Setup (In Eighteenth Century Eastern Rajasthan
Merchants in the rural setup in 18 th century Eastern Rajasthan is a worthwhile topic of this paper because mercantile class are the most famous and influential in India. They appear to be integral to the Amber State due to the multidimensional role they played at various levels. In fact one cannot conjure a complete picture of Amber without handling the role of this particular class.The rural market was a vital feature of the local economy in Eastern Rajasthan. Even in the small villages' rice, gram, flour (wheat and barley), ghee, maka, sugar, vegetables and other commodities could be obtained and transported to the towns. An exploration of documents like amal-dastur rahdari and amal-dastur chabutra kotwali documents, however, gives the impression that a very large number of peasants were not able to reach the open market at all. They, therefore, had to sell their goods to the village merchants. These local merchants bought commodities from the villages and sold them either in the same village where they had purchased them or in the neighbouring villages. The purchasers might be urban merchants or their agents, or even the village moneylender.In view of the nature of market/ a unified market of Eastern Rajasthan, one can comprehend the importance of the role of these local traders, notably the mahajans or panch mahajan who purchased the jinsi directly from the peasant and then sold it in the market. The mahajan and bania played an important role in transporting the revenue-grain to the nearest market or to the state granary (awar).The 18 th century Rajput states gave enough encouragement to the traders and merchants. The latter were granted free trade facilities and reduction in the taxes levied under the name of sairjihat, mapa, and rahdari. The rise of the trader-merchant class was due to large scale use of money capital in the commercial transactions-a practice in which the money accumulation of this class was favourable employed. No picture of Jaipur would be complete unless we keep in view its trading and banking class.
The state and the rural grain market in eighteenth century eastern Rajasthan
Indian Economic & Social History Review, 1988
Studies of the structure and organisation of local markets in India have increasingly come to attract scholarly attention since the seminal work of B.R. Grover on rural commercial life in seventeenth and eighteenth century north India.' The general pattern of local rural trade that emerges from these studies is the essentially vertical thrust of commodities moving out of the locality through a hierarchy of markets linked by chains of intermediaries Note on sources:. The primary sources used in this article are from the Jaipur Records Section, Daftar Diwan Hamri, Rajasthan State Archives, Bikaner. The evidence on which this study is based is primarily in the form of chittis or letters written by the diwans (chief administrative and revenue officials) to the subordinate administrative officials at the pargana, particularly the amil. Each chitti contains the substaltce of the complaint, request or report received by the diwan from diverse sources, followed by his instructions on the matter to the concerned official. As a large part of the records have not been catalogued as yet, I have used the following convention in the citations: the date of the chitti as given in the original with day, month and year in accordance to the lunar, purinmanta calendric system of northern India. The year, in Vikrami Samvat (VS) has been converted to the corresponding Christian era (AD) in accordance to the tables in Dewan Bahadur L.D. Swami Kannu Pillai, Indian Chronology: A Practical Guide B. C.1 to A. D. 2000, Madras, 1911. Unless otherwise stated, the letters were written to the amils of the parganas mentioned. The numbers in brackets refer to my reference index, which have been included as an indispensable aid to locating documents in my personal microfilm collection given the absence of systematic cataloguing of the records. The other records used are the arhsattas, or the annual abstracts of income and expenditure for each pargana, and the dastur-amals or the schedules of taxation. ' B.R. Grover, 'An integrated pattern of commercial life in the rural society of north India during the 17th and 18th centuries',
Studies in People's History VI. 2, 2019
The history of the evolution of state in India, or any country, cannot be studied in isolation from the evolution of other institutions of society. We are thus entitled to trace the evolution of the 'state society' meaning a society that had the state as its major institution; and this further obliges us to trace, among other factors behind the evolution of state, the factor of trade, its organisation and requirements, security being a major factor behind its own growth-one that could only be provided, in its turn, by the state. The present article draws on the varied evidence available to us from the so-called 'threshold times', ending c. 1300, on the evolving relationship between the mercantile world and the state. Both literary texts and inscriptions are put to use in our enquiry. It brings into question the widespread assumption that there was a decline of trading activities in the late centuries of the period the article deals with.
Structure and Movement of Wages in the Mughal empire
This chapter explores four institutional factors which went into the making of the wage structure in the Mughal Empire. Focusing on the relationship between monetization, patterns of currency circulation and wage payments, it also raises historiographical issues crucial to the understanding of the overtime movement of money wages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It must be admitted that quantitative data on wages, prices, money supply and income are extremely limited and fragmentary for the whole of medieval India (00-800). It is only from the middle of the nineteenth century (8) that one begins to get unbroken statistical series on prices and wages. This explains the short treatment the subject has received in current historiography. However, there is sufficient evidence -some of it fresh -to commence an investigation into the process of wage determination and payment and to offer new interpretations for existing material.
Agricultural Trade and Markets in British India: Gaya and Shahabad Districts 1800-1920
Indian Historical Review
Agricultural trade and markets during the period under study were largely shaped by the logic of subsistence agriculture, available infrastructure, the land rent payment system and patterns of demand. There were six striking features. First, the construction of all-weather roads and the railway, part of the modern public infrastructure put in place soon after the administration of the two districts came directly under the British Crown in 1858, gave a great fillip to trading activity. Old trade routes lost their pre-eminence, as new channels took root. The modern infrastructure also tended to integrate the markets in the two districts on the one hand, while increasing the pulls of external markets on the other. This was reflected in greater price equalization between markets. Second, notwithstanding greater market integration and increased stability in annual farm yields on account of the construction of modern irrigation canals that reduced the reliance on monsoonal precipitation, sharp seasonal fluctuations in the market price of food grains continued. Third, there was a sustained secular upswing in agricultural prices practically throughout the period, with the terms of trade moving in favor of agriculture, as the entry of mass produced wage goods into local markets had a deflationary impact on industrial goods. This, along with the growing depth of trade and markets, and changes in the land rent payment system, facilitated the rise of a new social group that became a new source of demand and was to subsequently play a major role in the emerging political economy. Fourth, there were three inter-dependent tiers of trading activity -- long distance trade conducted by arhatiyas, trade between major trade centers conducted by ladu beparis, and trade within the village dominated by the grihasta bepari, the chief source of agricultural credit and frequently an agriculturist himself. Modern infrastructure transformed the conduct of long-distance trade, even as the pattern of short distance trade and credit remained remarkably resilient. The fifth feature was the sharp and sudden expansion of the range of products traded in the market, as the latter was drawn into the emerging global system with the first industrial nation at the epicenter. While locally produced handicraft products like indigenous cotton cloth and paper lost their former importance, trade in agricultural commodities and imported industrial goods grew. Sixth, and last, was the increase in the monetization of the rural economy at the cutting edge as the traditional system of paying rent in kind was commuted to cash.
Historia crítica, 2023
Objective/Context: This study has two main goals. First, it explores the structural and organizational dynamics of the textile industry and the market in early modern India, eighteenth-century Gujarat in particular. In this context, the paper also examines how the ascendancy of the English East India Company in the political economy of Western India and the region’s transition to a colonial economy impacted the industry, the market, and the relationship between weavers and merchants. Methodology: This paper draws on the literature on textile production and trade, as well as on capitalism in early modern and colonial India, and uses evidence about Gujarat from the records of the English and Dutch East India Companies. Originality: This paper argues that the relationship between weavers and merchants in Surat/Gujarat was dynamic, complementary, and at times, contentious. None of them was able to dominate the relationship, and the English East India Company could not substitute a coercion-based production relation for a market-based one. Conclusions: The dynamics—such as product specialization and innovation, division of labor, the contract system, and forward buying—point to the existence of commercial capitalism in the textile economy. The paper also argues that because of the extraordinary diversity of people engaged in the industry and their varying professional and transactional experiences, it is relevant to recognize that commercial capitalism represents a mode of production that co-existed with others in the economy.