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

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: 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
×

42477 results in Collections

Page 2067 of 2124

  • 3 - The South

  • 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 203-213

  • Summary

    Three centuries separate the high point of Vijayanagara authority and the establishment of undisputed British rule in south India. There were also interior towns which came to thrive as the political centres of 'nāyka kingdoms'. The encouragement of foreign trade by the pre-Talikota Vijayanagara rulers was seen to be vital for the access which such trade gave these rulers to horses, firearms, and foreign soldiers. The rise of new centres of power in the macro-region under nāykas and their subordinates, pālaiyakkaras in Tamil, pālegādus in Telugu, and pālegdras in Kannada, 'poligars' to the British - while weakening the Vijayanagara state, did stimulate economic activity and development. Throughout the turbulent period from 1550 to about 1700, there are repeated references to the plunder of accumulated treasure. The traders and some Brahmans emerged as the most active of the great merchants trading with and under the European companies on the Coromandel Coast in the seventeenth century.

  • II - South India: Some General Considerations of the Region and its Early History

  • 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 14-42

  • Summary

    The term 'south India' denotes that portion of peninsular India beneath the Krishna River and the watershed of its major tributary, the Tungabhadra. The major early source of civilizational elements within the macroregion defined was the Tamil plain. The northernmost of the Tamil plain was Tondaimandalam, south of this was the territory called 'Naduvil-nadu', and, below this, in the Kaveri basin, Cholamandalam. The southern portion of the peninsula shares with the northern, Deccan, portion a peninsular configuration which emphasizes the sea and contact beyond the sub-continent by means of it. From an early time until perhaps the fourteenth century, the sea offered the south Indians opportunities for both trade and piracy. The Coromandel plain was the major core region of south India, extending from the tip of the peninsula to the northern edge of the broad delta of the Godavari and Krishna rivers. Irrigated rice culture permitted a high degree of routinization of cultivation p.

  • 1 - Economic Conditions before 1200

  • 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 43-47

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the medieval Indian economic history before the Ghorian conquests of the late twelfth century. Global historical factors which appear to have contributed to the decline in prosperity of both areas include invasion by fresh waves of barbarian central Asian tribes; the closure of the silk-route through the Tarim basin and north-west India to the Arabian Sea, and the rise of Islam. The coastal areas of Gujarat and Coromandel remained within the network of maritime trade, and the conditions which obtained there differed from the increasing isolation and impoverishment of northern India. During this period, landholding became the chief basis of social and political status. There was an increasing fragmentation and hereditarization of local power under what has variously been termed 'the Samanta system' or 'Indian feudalism'. In urban life the fissiparous direction of Indian society was reflected in the proliferation jati (caste) groups and the increasing rigidity of the hold of brahmanical Hinduism and the varndsramadharm.

  • 1 - North India

  • 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 235-249

  • Summary

    This chapter surveys agrarian relations in Mughal India, with an examination of the nature and magnitude of 'land revenue' (māl, kharāj), since it accounted for the larger part of the agricultural surplus of the country. Under Akbar, the ɀabt system, which simplified the process of assessment very greatly, though much depended on the accuracy with which the standard cash rates were fixed for each locality, practically covered the entire region from the Indus to the Ghaghra. With the land revenue accounting for the bulk of the surplus agricultural produce, the assignment of the larger portion of the empire in jāgīrdārs meant placing in the hands of a numerically very small class control over much of the GNP of the country. The role assigned to the zamīndārs in the Mughal revenue system tended to blur the barriers. The zamīndārs often claimed to derive their right from settling a villag.

  • 1 - Mughal India

  • 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 434-451

  • Summary

    The cities and towns of the Indian sub-continent served as the repositories of higher culture and learning, both as reservoirs in which were preserved the Sanskritic and Indo-Islamic 'Great Traditions' and as conduits through which those traditions could be transmitted to society as a whole. Considering the enormous diversity of urban economies and urban cultures spanning the sub-continent, it would be impossible to speak of a typical Indian city of the Mughal period. The relations between the urban population and the Mughal state were determined in large measure by the fact that the traditional Indo-Muslim city, like the traditional Islamic city in north Africa and the Middle East, lacked any kind of corporate or municipal institutions. The kōtwāl's authority was so extensive and touched so many aspects of urban life, the towns and cities of Mughal India must have been very strictly controlled on behalf of the central government.

  • XII - The Monetary System and Prices

  • 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 360-381

  • Summary

    Until the reign of Sher Shah, the principal coin in circulation in northern India was the billon sikandari, a copper coin with a small silver alloy, which had developed out of the progressive debasement of the silver tanka of the Delhi sultans. While the rupee became the principal coin for commercial transactions and tax payments, the Mughals issued a gold coin, muhr of 169 grains troy. The prices of foodgrains may theoretically be the best index of the movement of the general price-level, because of the fact that in a mainly agrarian economy, these determine to a large extent the costs and prices of all commodities. In the experience of modern capitalist economies, the doubling of prices during the first sixty years of the seventeenth century and again the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, would hardly merit the designation of inflation. The income of the ruling class came from collection of taxes, mainly the land revenue.

  • 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.

Page 2067 of 2124