The Nature of Village and Urban Economy in pre-British Bengal (original) (raw)

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The study explores the economic activities in pre-British Bengal, focusing on the self-sufficient village economies characterized by customary agricultural practices and limited labor division. It highlights the isolation of villages, their administrative systems, and the role of artisans and merchants in local production and trade. Ultimately, the findings illustrate the intricate interdependence of agriculture and industry, and the significant social structures that governed the economic environment of the time.

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',

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.

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