Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Publications
  3. Collections & Series
  4. Cambridge Histories
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Societies Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

18962 results in Cambridge Histories

Page 892 of 949

  • 1 - The Mughal Empire

  • from VII - State and the Economy
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 172-193

  • Summary

    The economic activities of the Mughal empire derived from the basic urges which created and sustained it as well as the structure of polity devised for their fulfilment. Welfare of the peasantry was a basic norm of policy, though the nature of the Mughal state and its ruling class inevitably induced a persistent tendency to deviate. Rural society in Mughal India was not an undifferentiated mass of pauperized peasants. The Mughal state and the nobility invested a part of their income in the infrastructure. Perhaps the most wasteful economic activity of the Mughal ruling class was their practice of hoarding up immense treasures. In matters of taxation, beside the jiziya, the incidence of which varied according to one's wealth and income, Hindu traders paid duties at the rate of five percent while Muslims paid two and half percent. The Mughal policy towards trade and traders reveals a peculiar contradiction built into the structure of the empire.

  • IV - Vijayanagara c. 1350-1564

  • from PART I - c. 1200–1500
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 102-124

  • Summary

    The political fact of a new great overlordship in the southern peninsula, the Vijayanagara state, had significant and necessary implications for the economic order. The warriors who ruled from the city of Vijayanagara on the very northern edge of the macro-region gradually converted Tamil country to a region of exploitation. The Vijayanagara nayaksystemconstituted a significant modification of the segmentary state of the Chojas. It was a system whose antecedents may be found in the earlier politico-military arrangements of the Hoysala kingdom of Karnataka and the Kakatlya kingdom of Andhra. Various political and military arrangements in Vijayanagara society had consequences regarding agrarian relationships. According to Vijayanagara historians, three tenurial categories existed in Vijayanagara times: amara, bhandaravada, and manya; and they refer to the manner in which the shares of income from villages were distributed. Some large temples which held income shares in many villages as devadana maintained an irrigation works department for the precise purpose o.

  • 2 - Agrarian Economy

  • from III - Northern India under the Sultanate
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 48-76

  • Summary

    Agriculture was carried on by peasants living in villages. The first ruler credited with digging canals for promoting agriculture was the immigrant 'Qarauna' sultan, Ghiyasuddin Tughluq. It was under Flruz Tughluq in the period 1351-86 that the biggest network of canals known in India until the nineteenth century was created. The peasants of the Delhi sultanate cultivated a very large number of crops. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the introduction of sericulture, or the breeding of the mulberry silkworm for producing true silk. In the western Panjab, which had seen two centuries of Ghaznavid rule, the Islamic taxation system was in operation. Barani introduces a new relationship in medieval economy: the relationship between land revenue and agricultural production. The iqtā's were the main instrument for transferring agrarian surplus to the ruling class and its soldiery. Another form of transfer of revenue claims existed, which went largely to maintain the religious intelligentsia and other dependants of the ruling class.

  • XI - Inland Trade

  • from PART II - c. 1500–1750
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 325-359

  • Summary

    Epigraphic evidence from south India shows the wide range of commodities, foodgrains, vegetables, fruit, butter, salt, pepper, cotton, thread, fabrics, and metalware, offered for sale in wholesale markets. A major feature of the inter-local trade was the predominantly one-way flow of commodities from the villages to towns, a corollary of rural self-sufficiency. Different types of producers' goods featured prominently in the inter-local exchange of commodities. Some towns developed as markets for particular products procured through the inter-regional or even overseas trade. The coast of Coromandel, dealing both in its own produce and imported luxuries, had a brisk trade with the west coast and Gujarat both along the coast and across the Deccan. The trade in foodstuffs included butter and oil. As the cost of water transport was relatively low, a substantial part of the inter-regional trade in cheap bulk goods like foodgrains, salt and saltpetre was carried along the coast or the inland waterways.

  • 2 - South India

  • from VIII - Systems of Agricultural Production
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 226-234

  • Summary

    South Indian agricultural production was developing first of all on the basis of utilizing the natural features of the land and by way of adaptation to them. Dry cultivation was most widespread in southern India and, compared to the northern parts, more reliable there. Storing rain and high-flood water in special reservoirs or with the help of dams became the main method of irrigation. In the beginning of the nineteenth century only 3 to 7 per cent of cultivated territory was irrigated in southern India. Irrigation management in the medieval period was often uneconomical. The main crop on the wet lands was paddy, the most important foodgrain of southern India. The Indian cultivator knows the usefulness of crop-rotation, of fallows, of manuring. The system of agriculture developed and traditionally consolidated in southern India was extensive in principle, oriented to labour-saving and not to land-saving.

  • 2 - Indian Merchants and the Trade in the Indian Ocean c. 1500–1750

  • from XIII - Foreign Trade
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 407-433

  • Summary

    At the turn of the fifteenth century, India's mercantile marine, largely in the hands of Gujarati Muslim merchants, appears to have been deployed principally in the middle Indian Ocean, dominating the sea-lanes between Cambay and Malacca. European trade in the Indian Ocean remained part of the traditional structure, which was enriched and strengthened through European skill and enterprise. On the eastern side, Pulicat and Negapatam were the principal ports of southern Coromandel. Of India's exports to the markets of the Indian Ocean three points are worth noting. First, as to India's major export, which was textiles throughout our period, the mass of it was of the coarser kind. Secondly, India exported common foods like rice and pulses, wheat and oil, for which there was considerable demand. Thirdly, the pattern of Indian exports like most other things, appears to have remained stable throughout the period. The vitality of Indian shipping notwithstanding, investment in shipping was not popular among Indian merchants.

  • 1 - Mughal India

  • from X - Non-Agricultural Production
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 261-307

  • Summary

    India was a leading manufacturing nation at least at par with pre-industrial Europe. A variety of manufactured foodstuffs, oil, butter, ghi, salt and sugar, were among the staples of the inter-regional trade. The Mughals spent freely on the construction of the chief cities and the nobles embellished Delhi at their own expense to gain the monarch's favour. The country's leading manufacture, cotton textiles, was produced in every part of the country. The metal was produced in the Mughal provinces of Bengal, Allahabad, Agra, Berar, Gujarat, Delhi and Kashmir. In the 1660s, the Dutch began to export iron products from Coromandel to Batavia. Manufacturing in Mughal India was predominantly a rural activity though most urban centres also had their artisan industries, especially production of certain luxury and semi-luxury goods. In parts of southern India, several occupations - carpenters, braziers, goldsmiths and stone-cutters, were included in the same caste-group allowing a certain degree of horizontal mobility.

  • 4 - The Currency System

  • from III - Northern India under the Sultanate
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 93-101

  • Summary

    The most decisive evidence of change in the economic life of northern India after the Muslim expansion is numismatic. The Chandra dynasty coins are important in suggesting a prototype for the broad-struck silver and gold issues of the Delhi and Bengal sultanates. The metrology of the new coinage is firmly Indian with no parallels in earlier Islamic coinage. The remonetarization of the economy might have occurred by the middle of the thirteenth century, for at this period the Suhrawardi shaykhs of Multan left assets of lakhs of tankas. In the monetary system of the Delhi sultanate a firm equation between gold and silver appears to have been established at 1:10. The existence of smaller moneys of account in the Delhi is demonstrated by Baranl's numerous references to dings and dirams. It is clear that the establishment of a trimetallic coinage in northern India in the thirteenth century was heavily dependent on the remittance of gold and silver from Bengal.

  • 2 - Maharashtra and the Deccan: a Note

  • from VII - State and the Economy
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 193-203

  • Summary

    This chapter points out and analyses the impacts of the administrative system, policies and political conditions of the states on the economy of the Deccan. The states dominating the Deccan during fifteenth to eighteenth centuries may be divided into three groups: the Deccan Muslim kingdoms 'Adilshahi kingdom, and the Maratha kingdom. Regarding the land-revenue system, the maratha empire, Shivaji, mostly followed the pattern introduced by Malik 'Ambar: doing away with revenue collection through hereditary officers of sub-districts, direct contact with village headmen through official collectors, and classification of land into four classes. The chapter also discusses aspects of agrarian policies adopted by the rulers of the Deccan. There were several hindrances to the free development of commerce which were caused by government. Whereas there were certain political obstacles for commerce, the rulers of the Deccan also encouraged its development and, by and large, trade and commerce flourished in the normal times in the cities and towns.

  • 2 - The Far South

  • from XIV - Towns and Cities
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 452-457

  • Summary

    Urbanism is a distinctive feature of the economic history of later medieval south India. The Vijayanagara state was based upon heavily fortified administrative centres often under the control of warriors and Brahmans who were strangers to the place. Brahmadeyas of the Chola period were settlements of great size and wealth under the control of an assembly of Brahmans. Temples of the post-Chola period became centres of pilgrimage necessitating a variety of facilities seldom before demanded. Kānci was a focal point for many of the sectarian and caste activities of the central Tamil plain just as Tirupati was for the northern portions of the plain and as Palni, Nanjunad, and Perur for the southern and western parts of the interior upland of the macro-region. An independent stimulus to urban development was military. Vijayanagara, the capital city of the empire from 1340 to 1565, was one of the greatest fortified cities of all of India.

  • 3 - South India

  • from X - Non-Agricultural Production
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 315-324

  • Summary

    In south India, handicrafts were based almost exclusively on manual labour and development of professional habits. Non-agricultural production demonstrated a great variety of forms of economic organization and of methods of integration into the macro-system of the economy. The system of inter-community natural unity of crafts and agriculture was sufficiently flexible to survive for a long time. Numerically the most important branches of rural commodity producing crafts were weaving and oil-pressing. Urban crafts were developed in India from the ancient period and distinguished by the high quality of goods. Indian artisans achieved high artistic skill especially in textile production. The concentration of textile workers in the sea-ports of the Coromandel Coast was enhanced. The majority of urban artisans were commodity producers. Economically the most important and organizationally and technologically the most developed industry was shipbuilding.

  • Appendix - The Medieval Economy of Assam

  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 478-505

  • Summary

    THE STATE AND THE RICE ECONOMY

    Political setting

    The land of Kamrup that once extended from the easternmost limits of the Brahmaputra valley to the banks of the river Karatoya was long in ruin when, in the early thirteenth century, Turko-Afghan adventurers from Bengal and the migrant Ahom (Tai) settlers from upper Burma appeared on the scene. No more was there any semblance of a central kingship left. Nor was it to reappear during the subsequent centuries under review. Instead, there persisted a fragmented political system. Several new tribal state formations, as well as a number of petty non-tribal and armed land-controllers (bhuyān/bhaumik) — the latter mostly concentrated in the western and central parts of the region — coexisted side by side.

    The Ahoms were an advanced plough-using tribe. Their rudimentary state had at its base not only their own settlements but also the subjugated non-Ahom villages, both settled and shifting. The Ahom nobility had domains allotted to them, and at their head was the king chosen from the royal clan. The king appointed select noblemen to important offices and could dismiss them when necessary. In turn, he was himself appointed and could be removed from office by the council of the great nobles. The adult male population owed the obligation of periodic service to the state. The utilization of the manpower pool was organized by the king with the help of a hierarchy of officers. The latter were entitled to exploit a portion of the mobilized labour for their own private gains.

  • I - The Geographical Background

  • from INTRODUCTION
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 1-13

  • Summary

    The Indian sub-continent enclosed by these ranges and the sea, approximately between latitudes 8° N and 37° N and longitudes 61° E and 97° 30' E, contains two broad physical divisions, the Indo-Gangetic plains and the peninsula. The Indo-Gangetic plains cover less than a third of the area of the sub-continent. South of the plains, lies the peninsular block, consisting of series of hills, scarps, plateaus and valleys, interspersed with some sizeable stretches of alluvium, notably, the Gujarat plains, Orissa, coastal Andhra, Tamilnadu and the Kerala coast. The Brahmaputra river made a large bend eastwards after its entry into Bengal. This channel carried its main stream well to the east of Dacca. Until an advanced stage of industrialization is reached in a country, the distribution of its population is likely to be governed by agricultural productivity. In the Indus delta, there was a firmly sited inner port, Thatta, near the head of the delta.

  • 2 - The Medieval Deccan and Maharashtra

  • from IX - Agrarian Relations and Land Revenue
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 249-260

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses agrarian relations with land revenue in Deccan and Maharashtra during medieval period. In the medieval western Deccan village, perhaps only the priests were employed by certain specific families under the typical 'jajmāni system. The village assembly called gota, gota sabhā, was presided over by the headman and attended by peasants and balutedārs. From ten to two hundred villages formed a pargana and so on, and each sub-district had one or several hereditary chiefs deśmukhs or desai and hereditary accountants deśpāndes, the former being usually peasant by caste and the latter, as a rule, Brahman. Kings and peshwas of the Marathas as well as preceding Muslim kings of the Deccan used to give waste land as inām to distinguished servants of the state, noted temples, monasteries and mosques, in addition to the hereditary officers of sub-districts and villages.

  • V - The Maritime Trade of India

  • from PART I - c. 1200–1500
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 125-160

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses significant developments, which occurred in the pattern of trade in early medieval centuries in the expansion of maritime activity in the eastern waters of the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. The presence of Indian traders, and of Indian men of religion as a civilizing force, led not only to a shared common culture, but also an expansion of the textile trade towards the growing markets, to developments of shipbuilding in southern and eastern India, and the entry of Indian merchants into direct trading with China. By 1200 commodities of the maritime trade were mainly carried in two types of vessel, evolved at the eastern and western ends of the trade, and plying almost exclusively within their particular sectors, the dhow and the junk. The expansion of Muslim maritime influence was a process independent of the encroachment on south Asia of Muslim arms, and the great Muslim expansion of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

  • 1 - Mughal India

  • from VIII - Systems of Agricultural Production
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 214-225

  • Summary

    Mughal India had the appearance of a vast geographical zone cultivated by myriads of peasants, each with his own separate field. The feature of Indian agriculture was the use of artificial irrigation to supplement rain and flood. Tanks or reservoirs played an important role as sources of irrigation in central India, the Deccan and southern India. In the northern plains, particularly the Upper Gangetic and Indus basins, numerous canals were cut from rivers to furnish irrigation. An important feature of Indian agriculture was the large number of food and non-food crops raised by the Indian peasant. The seventeenth century saw the introduction and expansion of two major crops, tobacco and maize. Horticulture witnessed some important developments during the Mughal period. India produced during the seventeenth century enormous quantities not only of foodgrains, but also of.

Page 892 of 949