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- By Rose Teteki Abbey, K. C. Abraham, David Tuesday Adamo, LeRoy H. Aden, Efrain Agosto, Victor Aguilan, Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Charanjit Kaur AjitSingh, Dorothy B E A Akoto, Giuseppe Alberigo, Daniel E. Albrecht, Ruth Albrecht, Daniel O. Aleshire, Urs Altermatt, Anand Amaladass, Michael Amaladoss, James N. Amanze, Lesley G. Anderson, Thomas C. Anderson, Victor Anderson, Hope S. Antone, María Pilar Aquino, Paula Arai, Victorio Araya Guillén, S. Wesley Ariarajah, Ellen T. Armour, Brett Gregory Armstrong, Atsuhiro Asano, Naim Stifan Ateek, Mahmoud Ayoub, John Alembillah Azumah, Mercedes L. García Bachmann, Irena Backus, J. Wayne Baker, Mieke Bal, Lewis V. Baldwin, William Barbieri, António Barbosa da Silva, David Basinger, Bolaji Olukemi Bateye, Oswald Bayer, Daniel H. Bays, Rosalie Beck, Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Guy-Thomas Bedouelle, Chorbishop Seely Beggiani, Wolfgang Behringer, Christopher M. Bellitto, Byard Bennett, Harold V. Bennett, Teresa Berger, Miguel A. Bernad, Henley Bernard, Alan E. Bernstein, Jon L. Berquist, Johannes Beutler, Ana María Bidegain, Matthew P. Binkewicz, Jennifer Bird, Joseph Blenkinsopp, Dmytro Bondarenko, Paulo Bonfatti, Riet en Pim Bons-Storm, Jessica A. Boon, Marcus J. Borg, Mark Bosco, Peter C. Bouteneff, François Bovon, William D. Bowman, Paul S. Boyer, David Brakke, Richard E. Brantley, Marcus Braybrooke, Ian Breward, Ênio José da Costa Brito, Jewel Spears Brooker, Johannes Brosseder, Nicholas Canfield Read Brown, Robert F. Brown, Pamela K. Brubaker, Walter Brueggemann, Bishop Colin O. Buchanan, Stanley M. Burgess, Amy Nelson Burnett, J. Patout Burns, David B. Burrell, David Buttrick, James P. Byrd, Lavinia Byrne, Gerado Caetano, Marcos Caldas, Alkiviadis Calivas, William J. Callahan, Salvatore Calomino, Euan K. Cameron, William S. Campbell, Marcelo Ayres Camurça, Daniel F. Caner, Paul E. Capetz, Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, Patrick W. Carey, Barbara Carvill, Hal Cauthron, Subhadra Mitra Channa, Mark D. Chapman, James H. Charlesworth, Kenneth R. Chase, Chen Zemin, Luciano Chianeque, Philip Chia Phin Yin, Francisca H. Chimhanda, Daniel Chiquete, John T. Chirban, Soobin Choi, Robert Choquette, Mita Choudhury, Gerald Christianson, John Chryssavgis, Sejong Chun, Esther Chung-Kim, Charles M. A. Clark, Elizabeth A. Clark, Sathianathan Clarke, Fred Cloud, John B. Cobb, W. Owen Cole, John A Coleman, John J. Collins, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Paul K. Conkin, Beth A. Conklin, Sean Connolly, Demetrios J. Constantelos, Michael A. Conway, Paula M. Cooey, Austin Cooper, Michael L. Cooper-White, Pamela Cooper-White, L. William Countryman, Sérgio Coutinho, Pamela Couture, Shannon Craigo-Snell, James L. Crenshaw, David Crowner, Humberto Horacio Cucchetti, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Elizabeth Mason Currier, Emmanuel Cutrone, Mary L. Daniel, David D. Daniels, Robert Darden, Rolf Darge, Isaiah Dau, Jeffry C. Davis, Jane Dawson, Valentin Dedji, John W. de Gruchy, Paul DeHart, Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Miguel A. De La Torre, George E. Demacopoulos, Thomas de Mayo, Leah DeVun, Beatriz de Vasconcellos Dias, Dennis C. Dickerson, John M. Dillon, Luis Miguel Donatello, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Susanna Drake, Jonathan A. Draper, N. Dreher Martin, Otto Dreydoppel, Angelyn Dries, A. J. Droge, Francis X. D'Sa, Marilyn Dunn, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, Rifaat Ebied, Mark J. Edwards, William H. Edwards, Leonard H. Ehrlich, Nancy L. Eiesland, Martin Elbel, J. Harold Ellens, Stephen Ellingson, Marvin M. Ellison, Robert Ellsberg, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Eldon Jay Epp, Peter C. Erb, Tassilo Erhardt, Maria Erling, Noel Leo Erskine, Gillian R. Evans, Virginia Fabella, Michael A. Fahey, Edward Farley, Margaret A. Farley, Wendy Farley, Robert Fastiggi, Seena Fazel, Duncan S. Ferguson, Helwar Figueroa, Paul Corby Finney, Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Thomas E. FitzGerald, John R. Fitzmier, Marie Therese Flanagan, Sabina Flanagan, Claude Flipo, Ronald B. Flowers, Carole Fontaine, David Ford, Mary Ford, Stephanie A. Ford, Jim Forest, William Franke, Robert M. Franklin, Ruth Franzén, Edward H. Friedman, Samuel Frouisou, Lorelei F. Fuchs, Jojo M. Fung, Inger Furseth, Richard R. Gaillardetz, Brandon Gallaher, China Galland, Mark Galli, Ismael García, Tharscisse Gatwa, Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Luis María Gavilanes del Castillo, Pavel L. Gavrilyuk, Volney P. Gay, Metropolitan Athanasios Geevargis, Kondothra M. George, Mary Gerhart, Simon Gikandi, Maurice Gilbert, Michael J. Gillgannon, Verónica Giménez Beliveau, Terryl Givens, Beth Glazier-McDonald, Philip Gleason, Menghun Goh, Brian Golding, Bishop Hilario M. Gomez, Michelle A. Gonzalez, Donald K. Gorrell, Roy Gottfried, Tamara Grdzelidze, Joel B. Green, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Cristina Grenholm, Herbert Griffiths, Eric W. Gritsch, Erich S. Gruen, Christoffer H. Grundmann, Paul H. Gundani, Jon P. Gunnemann, Petre Guran, Vidar L. Haanes, Jeremiah M. Hackett, Getatchew Haile, Douglas John Hall, Nicholas Hammond, Daphne Hampson, Jehu J. Hanciles, Barry Hankins, Jennifer Haraguchi, Stanley S. Harakas, Anthony John Harding, Conrad L. Harkins, J. William Harmless, Marjory Harper, Amir Harrak, Joel F. Harrington, Mark W. Harris, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Van A. Harvey, R. Chris Hassel, Jione Havea, Daniel Hawk, Diana L. Hayes, Leslie Hayes, Priscilla Hayner, S. Mark Heim, Simo Heininen, Richard P. Heitzenrater, Eila Helander, David Hempton, Scott H. Hendrix, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Gina Hens-Piazza, Carter Heyward, Nicholas J. Higham, David Hilliard, Norman A. Hjelm, Peter C. Hodgson, Arthur Holder, M. Jan Holton, Dwight N. Hopkins, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Po-Ho Huang, James Hudnut-Beumler, Jennifer S. Hughes, Leonard M. Hummel, Mary E. Hunt, Laennec Hurbon, Mark Hutchinson, Susan E. Hylen, Mary Beth Ingham, H. Larry Ingle, Dale T. Irvin, Jon Isaak, Paul John Isaak, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Hans Raun Iversen, Margaret C. Jacob, Arthur James, Maria Jansdotter-Samuelsson, David Jasper, Werner G. Jeanrond, Renée Jeffery, David Lyle Jeffrey, Theodore W. Jennings, David H. Jensen, Robin Margaret Jensen, David Jobling, Dale A. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Maxwell E. Johnson, Sarah Johnson, Mark D. Johnston, F. Stanley Jones, James William Jones, John R. Jones, Alissa Jones Nelson, Inge Jonsson, Jan Joosten, Elizabeth Judd, Mulambya Peggy Kabonde, Robert Kaggwa, Sylvester Kahakwa, Isaac Kalimi, Ogbu U. Kalu, Eunice Kamaara, Wayne C. Kannaday, Musimbi Kanyoro, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Kaufmann, Léon Nguapitshi Kayongo, Richard Kearney, Alice A. Keefe, Ralph Keen, Catherine Keller, Anthony J. Kelly, Karen Kennelly, Kathi Lynn Kern, Fergus Kerr, Edward Kessler, George Kilcourse, Heup Young Kim, Kim Sung-Hae, Kim Yong-Bock, Kim Yung Suk, Richard King, Thomas M. King, Robert M. Kingdon, Ross Kinsler, Hans G. Kippenberg, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Clifton Kirkpatrick, Leonid Kishkovsky, Nadieszda Kizenko, Jeffrey Klaiber, Hans-Josef Klauck, Sidney Knight, Samuel Kobia, Robert Kolb, Karla Ann Koll, Heikki Kotila, Donald Kraybill, Philip D. W. Krey, Yves Krumenacker, Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan, Simanga R. Kumalo, Peter Kuzmic, Simon Shui-Man Kwan, Kwok Pui-lan, André LaCocque, Stephen E. Lahey, John Tsz Pang Lai, Emiel Lamberts, Armando Lampe, Craig Lampe, Beverly J. Lanzetta, Eve LaPlante, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ariel Bybee Laughton, Leonard Lawlor, Bentley Layton, Robin A. Leaver, Karen Lebacqz, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Marilyn J. Legge, Hervé LeGrand, D. L. LeMahieu, Raymond Lemieux, Bill J. Leonard, Ellen M. Leonard, Outi Leppä, Jean Lesaulnier, Nantawan Boonprasat Lewis, Henrietta Leyser, Alexei Lidov, Bernard Lightman, Paul Chang-Ha Lim, Carter Lindberg, Mark R. Lindsay, James R. Linville, James C. Livingston, Ann Loades, David Loades, Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole, Lo Lung Kwong, Wati Longchar, Eleazar López, David W. Lotz, Andrew Louth, Robin W. Lovin, William Luis, Frank D. Macchia, Diarmaid N. J. MacCulloch, Kirk R. MacGregor, Marjory A. MacLean, Donald MacLeod, Tomas S. Maddela, Inge Mager, Laurenti Magesa, David G. Maillu, Fortunato Mallimaci, Philip Mamalakis, Kä Mana, Ukachukwu Chris Manus, Herbert Robinson Marbury, Reuel Norman Marigza, Jacqueline Mariña, Antti Marjanen, Luiz C. L. Marques, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan'a Mphahlele), Caleb J. D. Maskell, Steve Mason, Thomas Massaro, Fernando Matamoros Ponce, András Máté-Tóth, Odair Pedroso Mateus, Dinis Matsolo, Fumitaka Matsuoka, John D'Arcy May, Yelena Mazour-Matusevich, Theodore Mbazumutima, John S. McClure, Christian McConnell, Lee Martin McDonald, Gary B. McGee, Thomas McGowan, Alister E. McGrath, Richard J. McGregor, John A. McGuckin, Maud Burnett McInerney, Elsie Anne McKee, Mary B. McKinley, James F. McMillan, Ernan McMullin, Kathleen E. McVey, M. Douglas Meeks, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, Ilie Melniciuc-Puica, Everett Mendoza, Raymond A. Mentzer, William W. Menzies, Ina Merdjanova, Franziska Metzger, Constant J. Mews, Marvin Meyer, Carol Meyers, Vasile Mihoc, Gunner Bjerg Mikkelsen, Maria Inêz de Castro Millen, Clyde Lee Miller, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Alexander Mirkovic, Paul Misner, Nozomu Miyahira, R. W. L. Moberly, Gerald Moede, Aloo Osotsi Mojola, Sunanda Mongia, Rebeca Montemayor, James Moore, Roger E. Moore, Craig E. Morrison O.Carm, Jeffry H. Morrison, Keith Morrison, Wilson J. Moses, Tefetso Henry Mothibe, Mokgethi Motlhabi, Fulata Moyo, Henry Mugabe, Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, Peggy Mulambya-Kabonde, Robert Bruce Mullin, Pamela Mullins Reaves, Saskia Murk Jansen, Heleen L. Murre-Van den Berg, Augustine Musopole, Isaac M. T. Mwase, Philomena Mwaura, Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Anne Nasimiyu Wasike, Carmiña Navia Velasco, Thulani Ndlazi, Alexander Negrov, James B. Nelson, David G. Newcombe, Carol Newsom, Helen J. Nicholson, George W. E. Nickelsburg, Tatyana Nikolskaya, Damayanthi M. A. Niles, Bertil Nilsson, Nyambura Njoroge, Fidelis Nkomazana, Mary Beth Norton, Christian Nottmeier, Sonene Nyawo, Anthère Nzabatsinda, Edward T. Oakes, Gerald O'Collins, Daniel O'Connell, David W. Odell-Scott, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Kathleen O'Grady, Oyeronke Olajubu, Thomas O'Loughlin, Dennis T. Olson, J. Steven O'Malley, Cephas N. Omenyo, Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, César Augusto Ornellas Ramos, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, Kenan B. Osborne, Carolyn Osiek, Javier Otaola Montagne, Douglas F. Ottati, Anna May Say Pa, Irina Paert, Jerry G. Pankhurst, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Samuele F. Pardini, Stefano Parenti, Peter Paris, Sung Bae Park, Cristián G. Parker, Raquel Pastor, Joseph Pathrapankal, Daniel Patte, W. Brown Patterson, Clive Pearson, Keith F. Pecklers, Nancy Cardoso Pereira, David Horace Perkins, Pheme Perkins, Edward N. Peters, Rebecca Todd Peters, Bishop Yeznik Petrossian, Raymond Pfister, Peter C. Phan, Isabel Apawo Phiri, William S. F. Pickering, Derrick G. Pitard, William Elvis Plata, Zlatko Plese, John Plummer, James Newton Poling, Ronald Popivchak, Andrew Porter, Ute Possekel, James M. Powell, Enos Das Pradhan, Devadasan Premnath, Jaime Adrían Prieto Valladares, Anne Primavesi, Randall Prior, María Alicia Puente Lutteroth, Eduardo Guzmão Quadros, Albert Rabil, Laurent William Ramambason, Apolonio M. Ranche, Vololona Randriamanantena Andriamitandrina, Lawrence R. Rast, Paul L. Redditt, Adele Reinhartz, Rolf Rendtorff, Pål Repstad, James N. Rhodes, John K. Riches, Joerg Rieger, Sharon H. Ringe, Sandra Rios, Tyler Roberts, David M. Robinson, James M. Robinson, Joanne Maguire Robinson, Richard A. H. Robinson, Roy R. Robson, Jack B. Rogers, Maria Roginska, Sidney Rooy, Rev. Garnett Roper, Maria José Fontelas Rosado-Nunes, Andrew C. Ross, Stefan Rossbach, François Rossier, John D. Roth, John K. Roth, Phillip Rothwell, Richard E. Rubenstein, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Markku Ruotsila, John E. Rybolt, Risto Saarinen, John Saillant, Juan Sanchez, Wagner Lopes Sanchez, Hugo N. Santos, Gerhard Sauter, Gloria L. Schaab, Sandra M. Schneiders, Quentin J. Schultze, Fernando F. Segovia, Turid Karlsen Seim, Carsten Selch Jensen, Alan P. F. Sell, Frank C. Senn, Kent Davis Sensenig, Damían Setton, Bal Krishna Sharma, Carolyn J. Sharp, Thomas Sheehan, N. Gerald Shenk, Christian Sheppard, Charles Sherlock, Tabona Shoko, Walter B. Shurden, Marguerite Shuster, B. Mark Sietsema, Batara Sihombing, Neil Silberman, Clodomiro Siller, Samuel Silva-Gotay, Heikki Silvet, John K. Simmons, Hagith Sivan, James C. Skedros, Abraham Smith, Ashley A. Smith, Ted A. Smith, Daud Soesilo, Pia Søltoft, Choan-Seng (C. S.) Song, Kathryn Spink, Bryan Spinks, Eric O. Springsted, Nicolas Standaert, Brian Stanley, Glen H. Stassen, Karel Steenbrink, Stephen J. Stein, Andrea Sterk, Gregory E. Sterling, Columba Stewart, Jacques Stewart, Robert B. Stewart, Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ken Stone, Anne Stott, Elizabeth Stuart, Monya Stubbs, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, David Kwang-sun Suh, Scott W. Sunquist, Keith Suter, Douglas Sweeney, Charles H. Talbert, Shawqi N. Talia, Elsa Tamez, Joseph B. Tamney, Jonathan Y. Tan, Yak-Hwee Tan, Kathryn Tanner, Feiya Tao, Elizabeth S. Tapia, Aquiline Tarimo, Claire Taylor, Mark Lewis Taylor, Bishop Abba Samuel Wolde Tekestebirhan, Eugene TeSelle, M. Thomas Thangaraj, David R. Thomas, Andrew Thornley, Scott Thumma, Marcelo Timotheo da Costa, George E. “Tink” Tinker, Ola Tjørhom, Karen Jo Torjesen, Iain R. Torrance, Fernando Torres-Londoño, Archbishop Demetrios [Trakatellis], Marit Trelstad, Christine Trevett, Phyllis Trible, Johannes Tromp, Paul Turner, Robert G. Tuttle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Peter Tyler, Anders Tyrberg, Justin Ukpong, Javier Ulloa, Camillus Umoh, Kristi Upson-Saia, Martina Urban, Monica Uribe, Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, Richard Vaggione, Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Valliere, T. J. 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Yee, Viktor Yelensky, Yeo Khiok-Khng, Gustav K. K. Yeung, Angela Yiu, Amos Yong, Yong Ting Jin, You Bin, Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Eliana Yunes, Robert Michael Zaller, Valarie H. Ziegler, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Aurora Zlotnik, Zhuo Xinping
- Edited by Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity
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- 05 August 2012
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- 20 September 2010, pp xi-xliv
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The Problem of Government Finance in British India: Taxation, Borrowing and the Allocation of Resources in the Inter-war Period
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Modern Asian Studies / Volume 19 / Issue 3 / July 1985
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- 28 November 2008, pp. 521-548
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- July 1985
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It isan axiom of India's economic history that government financial resources during the last half-century of the British period were inadequate. ‘The poverty of India was matched by the poverty of its government’ writes Dharma Kumar in The Cambridge Economic History and she estimates that ‘except during the two wars of the twentieth century, the tax revenues amounted to a mere 5 to 7 per cent of the national income'. Raymond Goldsmith's assessment is of an even lower proportion realized by taxation and he further believes that the scanty share of government expenditure in national product declined after the first world war. In most of the historiography, this situation is seen as a notable shortcoming created by imperial rule, the inevitable product of the passivity of the ‘night-watchman state’. Reviewing financial policy in 1939, P. J. Thomas described its predominant characteristic as ‘conservatism’, marked by ‘extreme reluctance to venture on new experiments in raising revenue’, ‘the low burden of public debt’ and ‘inadequate expenditure on social services’.3 These features could have played an important role in constricting India's economic and social development, particularly in the inter-war period of the twentieth century. Financial weaknesses then may have undermined the 'new industrial policy' of the post-first world war era4 and in the 1930s superficially present a crucial contrast with Asia's other major industrializing power, Japan, where government appeared to stimulate the economy impressively by massive borrowing and expenditure.5
Maps
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 10 December 2009
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- 28 March 1985, pp xii-xvi
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5 - Continuity and change in the rural economy, 1850–1900
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp 125-161
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Summary
Implicit in our whole discussion of the causes of the Deccan Riots and, even, the evolution of official attitudes to the problem of indebtedness has been the central issue of fluctuations within the rural economy. In a society which lived so close to the struggle for subsistence, these short-term changes in economic climate were likely to have substantial, deep-felt impact. Yet, also, they were the very stuff out of which any broader developments in economic performance might be constructed. If for example, the rural economy could enjoy a prolonged period of buoyant demand and favourable climatic conditions, then some important steps might be taken towards extending local supply of capital and credit. On the other hand, even one season of serious famine might create more than short-term crisis, by killing off agricultural stock and hence intensifying crucial limitations of resources. So we need, at this stage, to try to delineate the pattern of economic fluctuations over the whole second half of the nineteenth century.
At the broadest level, this is not difficult. From the 1840s, as we have seen, population, land use and price levels seem to have been rising consistently in western India, although often from fairly low bases. The process then accelerated markedly during the first half of the 1860s. Tytler's comments, for that period, from Ahmednagar District might be applied to most regions of the Presidency: ‘the seasons have been excellent, the market prices very high and the consumption of produce and consequent demand great and increasing’. After about 1870, however, prices and, in some cases, the extent of cultivated acreage began to decline.
Preface
- Neil Charlesworth
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This book has been a long time in the making. My work on the subject of the Bombay peasantry in the British period began when I was a research student at Cambridge in the early 1970s and has continued since then during my time at Glasgow. Over this period I have incurred many debts. Financially, I have been assisted by the Social Science Research Council, which sponsored my original research, Cambridge University, through the award of the Holland Rose Studentship, and Glasgow University, with a number of additional grants. I am grateful to librarians and archivists, in particular in four institutions: the Maharashtra State Archives in Bombay, the India Office Library and Records and the University Libraries of Cambridge and Glasgow.
Academically, I have benefited enormously from the fertile climate of debate in South Asian history which existed at Cambridge while I was there and also, since, from numerous valuable discussions with colleagues and friends at Glasgow. It would be invidious to name names but many may notice here the influence of their ideas and I am grateful to them. One academic debt is, however, so fundamental that it must be specifically recorded. The late Professor Eric Stokes first suggested the subject as an area of research to me in 1969 and thereafter as supervisor and friend constantly supported the work's development until his untimely death in February 1981. It is a source of deep regret to me that this book was not published during his lifetime. At least, I can record here the very great debt which I owe to him and to the example of scholarship and academic comradeship which he set.
2 - The village in 1850: land tenure, social structure and revenue policy
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp 17-69
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Traditionally, the Bombay Presidency occupies a simple place in generalised descriptions of land tenure and social structure in British India. It is seen, par excellence, as the land of the small peasant. Not here, according to orthodoxy, was either the rentier landlord, the overlord chieftain or, alternatively, the sense of complex interdependence between cultivators which produced the co-sharing principles of the ‘village community’. Peasant proprietorship and the raising of land revenue directly from the smallholding cultivator was always the declared objective of British revenue administration here and ‘from the first the Collectors tried to reach behind the headmen to the individual peasant’. By 1850 the cultivator was genuinely established as de iure and de facto owner of much of the land.
Yet the generalisation masks much. In many areas various types of superior right to the land had established themselves. Elsewhere, cultivators had evolved conditions of collective responsibility or degrees of leasing out and sub-infeudation which complicated the simple pattern of the tiller owning the land. These processes had in many ways been considerably stimulated during the first half of the nineteenth century, despite the British authorities' general belief in ryotwari arrangements. A leading feature of the two or three decades which followed the overthrow of the Poona Peshwa in 1818 was widespread agricultural depression. Partly this was an all-Indian phenomenon, the product of price decline caused by damage to commerce created by the British conquests and monetary contraction in the wake of India's new balance of payments obligations.
Bibliography
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp 303-314
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8 - The impact of government policy, 1880–1935
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp 239-267
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In carrying forward the story of the agricultural economy's evolution down to 1935, we have, however, omitted any consideration of one possibly vital influence: the role of the state and its policies. In 1880, with the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act, the Bombay government had just assumed new powers to influence rural economic relationships in the four central Deccan districts to add to its traditional prominent role within the village as an arbiter of land rights and the beneficiary of land revenue. The Deccan Act, as we saw, was a complex measure and its impact may have been highly consequential, not necessarily in the manner intended. At the same time, it could hardly set a final seal on debate over agrarian reform. The range of developments we have described, particularly tenurial changes and those in the organisation of land, provided a further challenge to policy. Motives would involve not only the inevitable security fears aroused by the apparent tenurial revolution recorded in the revenue papers and census material. Even if tenurial changes were regarded in sanguine vein as the product of a more fluid system, they still carried the danger of destroying that direct administrative contact with and knowledge of the cultivating peasantry which was the ryotwari system's special claim. In a simple technical sense, too, the changes in land organisation developing in the early twentieth century made nonsense of the revenue department's intricate survey maps. So we might expect further calls to reform and legislative action, like those which had proved so successful in the 1870s.
Peasants and Imperial Rule
- Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Bombay Presidency 1850–1935
- Neil Charlesworth
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- 28 March 1985
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This book is a detailed historical study of agriculture and agrarian society in a major province of British India, the Bombay presidency. Its objective is to examine the impact of British rule on the Indian peasantry, and the changes it brought. Among the specific issues discussed by the author are the development of the British land revenue system, the pattern of expansion in commercial agriculture and the consequences in terms of ownership and organisation of land and agrarian social structure. Dr Charlesworth goes on to look at the role of government policy, the nature of peasant protest movements and the effects of the interwar depression. He concludes that significant long-term economic and social change did occur but that the highly 'differential' pattern to commercialisation prevented any structural transformation in the peasant economy and society.
Index
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp 315-319
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List of maps and tables
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp ix-ix
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Note on technical terms and references
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp xi-xi
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Glossary
- Neil Charlesworth
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Contents
- Neil Charlesworth
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6 - The Bombay peasantry, 1850–1900: social stability or social stratification?
- Neil Charlesworth
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- 28 March 1985, pp 162-203
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Summary
The pattern of economic change we have described – marked, during the later nineteenth century, by a highly divergent process of commercialisation – permits, in turning to its social impact, the presentation of a familiar theme. During the 1970s it became almost established orthodoxy, so far as that ever exists in Indian history, to see the onset of a more extensive commercialisation within the peasant economy as creating significant social stratification. Access to the opportunities presented by commercialisation, it is often argued, depended on control of resources, such as bullock carts, irrigation facilities and, particularly, capital and credit, which were not widely held within village society. In turn, the cultivation of cash crops and their sale to wider markets allegedly gave the commercial producer enhanced wealth and power compared with the bulk of the villagers who remained, primarily, under the tutelage of subsistence concerns. In sum, the ‘rich peasant’ is frequently seen as the beneficiary of rural change in the late nineteenth century. Social stratification, of course, has long been a traditional theme of Indian agrarian history, antedating detailed economic analyses of rural markets and commerce, but its causes, in the historiography of the 1960s, were typically ascribed to government policy or socio-political processes. This emphasis has steadily disappeared in the more recent literature, leaving differential patterns of commercialisation strengthening stratification as the interpretation of both economic and social historian. This connection has been stressed not only within our interpretation of western India but also, prominently, by Washbrook and the Rays from parallel developments in Madras and Bengal.
7 - The agricultural economy, 1900–1935: the critical watershed?
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 10 December 2009
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- 28 March 1985, pp 204-238
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Summary
If the nineteenth-century history of Bombay's agrarian economy raises complex problems of interpretation, when we turn to the period after 1900 the difficulties multiply. During the first third of the twentieth century the economic influences and fluctuations seem markedly more dramatic and violent than those experienced previously. Price trends are the most conspicuous indices of this. Levels in the Bombay village – partly in consequence of the stabilisation of the rupee in the 1890s – became increasingly shaped by international price movements, but at the very time when they were particularly volatile. Hence rapid inflation during the 1910s and then the sharp falls associated with the onset of the depression during the late 1920s afflicted the countryside and might be expected to have had substantial consequences.
This instability appears to be repeated in climatic trends. There was no further great disaster like 1899–1900, but rainfall levels in many localities still seem lower than was typical during the late nineteenth century and more uneven in distribution between years and over geographical areas. Karjat taluk in the Ahmednagar famine belt, for example, experienced average annual rainfall levels between 1901 and 1921 below even the average for the 1890s and over 20 per cent under the average of 1876–86, further complicated by ‘the irregular and untimely nature of the fall’. Under these circumstances occasional famine persisted and there were outbreaks affecting many areas of the Presidency in 1918–19 and again in 1920–1. Yet these occurrences did not have the deep-seated impact of the great famines of the late nineteenth century. Peasant reaction during these famines and other local ‘scarcities’ seemed, as we shall see, more subtle and flexible, marked by substantial migration.
1 - Introduction: the peasant in India and Bombay Presidency
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 28 March 1985, pp 1-16
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The peasantry is not just ‘the awkward class’ but also the typical class. Historically, most men's occupation has been within small-scale agriculture and examining change and development in this context is therefore vital to any realistic understanding of the evolution of the modern world. That is the root justification for this study of the agrarian economy and society of one major province of British India, the Bombay Presidency, in the period between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1930s. As a methodology, in the face of the daunting potential scope of the subject, three distinct areas of enquiry will predominate. Firstly, we need to investigate the economics of agriculture and changes within it; the financing of operations, the types of crops grown, the methods employed and, so far as possible, the levels and trends in output performance. Yet agriculture does not operate in a vacuum. Land tenure and the structure of power and status in the village determine its context. In turn, agricultural developments can create agrarian change: extending commercialisation of agriculture, for example, might prove an engine of revolution within traditional patterns of landownership, land tenure and peasant social relationships. Thirdly, in British India, the imperial rulers, dependent on the village for revenue and the mass acquiescence which guaranteed their political security, were always intimately concerned with rural issues. So our study must also, in part, be a study of British agrarian and revenue policy and its effects.
4 - Indebtedness and the Deccan Riots of 1875
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 10 December 2009
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- 28 March 1985, pp 95-124
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Our concern, in the last chapter, was predominantly with the credit system as an economic structure. Viewed in this light, it can emerge as a relatively sophisticated mechanism evolved to utilise such resources as were available to the mid-nineteenth-century village economy. However, the social implications were possibly far wider than yet considered. The very pervasiveness of the credit system throughout western Indian society meant that there were many different types of relationship, each with greatly varying potential consequences. Sometimes, where one party's ability to negotiate continued loans collapsed, the results might be dramatic. As we saw earlier, it was indisputable that many talukdari estates in Ahmedabad were being sold up cheaply for debt in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Here was the credit system – although wider issues of economic performance were also involved – unquestionably acting as an agent of social change. The Bombay government declared during the course of the rescue operations of 1862 that it wished to revive the talukdars' ‘ancient proprietary rights’ but ‘it is manifest that the object of Government would be entirely defeated … so long as the Talookdars are in debt’.
Social changes, like the decline of the Ahmedabad talukdars, were no novelty in western India and we have learnt to be much more sceptical about assuming that the beneficiaries in such cases were always new-comers to landownership and the status it conferred. Yet the fundamental issue concerns the frequency of such events by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Frontmatter
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 10 December 2009
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- 28 March 1985, pp i-vi
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9 - The peasant and politics in the early twentieth century
- Neil Charlesworth
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- Peasants and Imperial Rule
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- 10 December 2009
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- 28 March 1985, pp 268-291
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Economic and social change has featured prominently in our analysis of western India's agrarian history: the differential spread of commercialisation in peasant agriculture, consequent geographical and social stratification and the intensification of demand for and pressure on land. Would this, in turn, produce a political response from the peasantry? The question is important because the history of Indian politics in Bombay Presidency, as elsewhere, would seem to demand a more intricate understanding of the rural situation from at least the First World War era. With Gandhi's emergence, action and protest apparently became much more broadly based. Some of the most persuasive accounts of politics, it is true, see the dynamic of local action as mainly faction-based competition for office and pickings, resulting in wide-ranging cross-class, cross-caste alliances. In theory, this interpretation firmly denies the existence of mass objectives or grievances as an impetus behind politics, but it is striking how, in practice, even here, rural economic change is frequently introduced as a decisive determinant of political developments. Further, it could not be denied that agrarian protest campaigns, whatever their derivation, proved an important propagandist and practical weapon against the British Raj in the twentieth century: the Bardoli campaign of 1928, as we have noted, ended revision land revenue settlements in the Bombay Presidency. So the character of peasant political behaviour in the western India of 1900–35 demands analysis and may, in turn, throw further light on economic and social processes.