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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge Economic History of India
  • Cited by 125
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
1982
Online ISBN:
9781139054515
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521226929
Subjects:
Economics: General Interest, Area Studies, South Asian History, Asian Studies, History, Economic History
Series:
The Cambridge Economic History of India (1)
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Asian History
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Contents

Page 1 of 2

Contents
  • I - The Geographical Background
    pp 1-13
  • View abstract

    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.
  • II - South India: Some General Considerations of the Region and its Early History
    pp 14-42
  • View abstract

    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
    pp 43-47
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 2 - Agrarian Economy
    pp 48-76
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 3 - Non-Agricultural Production and Urban Economy
    pp 76-93
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The economy of the Delhi sultanate seems to be marked by a considerable expansion of the money economy, accelerating particularly during the first half of the fourteenth century. Among the metals, iron ore of an exceptionally high grade was mined in India and was used to produce damascened steel which had a worldwide reputation. Among precious stones, diamonds were mined in the Deccan. The pearl fishery off Tuticorin in south India is described by Marco Polo. The shawl industry of Kashmir had been equally firmly established much before the thirteenth century. The arrival of the ' Saracenic' architecture represented something more than a change in the appearance and design of buildings. Indian metallurgy enjoyed a worldwide reputation in the fashioning of swords. Alā'ud'dīn Khaljī's price-control measures enticed the historian BaranI not only into giving us important price data, but also into reflections as to the factors which govern prices and the relationship between prices and wages.
  • 4 - The Currency System
    pp 93-101
  • View abstract

    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.
  • IV - Vijayanagara c. 1350-1564
    pp 102-124
  • View abstract

    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.
  • V - The Maritime Trade of India
    pp 125-160
  • View abstract

    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.
  • VI - Population
    pp 161-171
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The size of the population of Mughal India can be estimated only on the basis of the richest repository of which is the A'īn-i Akbarī, the unique work compiled by Akbar's minister, Abū'l Fazl, in 1595-6. The distribution of the population into rural and urban sectors is as difficult to estimate as determining the total size of population. There are, however, possibly two ways of working out the ratio of the urban population to the total. One way would be by tracing the distribution of the agricultural surplus, on the assumption that the peasants' own consumption did not necessitate any significant productive activity in the towns. The second way of estimating the relative size of Indian urban population in the seventeenth century is by working from what it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, before the economic impact of the Industrial Revolution in England was extensively felt in India.
  • 1 - The Mughal Empire
    pp 172-193
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 2 - Maharashtra and the Deccan: a Note
    pp 193-203
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 3 - The South
    pp 203-213
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 1 - Mughal India
    pp 214-225
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 2 - South India
    pp 226-234
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 1 - North India
    pp 235-249
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 2 - The Medieval Deccan and Maharashtra
    pp 249-260
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 1 - Mughal India
    pp 261-307
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 2 - Maharashtra and the Deccan
    pp 308-315
  • View abstract

    Summary

    There was a fairly uniform pattern of rural industries based on the caste system in the Deccan throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The most important of the urban industries were cotton and silk-weaving. Especially during the 1660s the Dutch merchants on Coromandel were in such a great need of pig-iron, iron bands, iron bars and cannon balls, that they organized a manufactory system of production for these items in their factories. In the first half of the eighteenth century when the Marathas achieved their zenith of power, urban industries in the western Deccan seem to have further developed, and brassworks of Kalyan, ornamental paper and silk-works of Aurangabad, and ordinary paper of Newasa were some of the most reputed. There were several large-scale industries in the Deccan, which were distinct from the ordinary urban industries. These were shipbuilding, diamond mining, and royal factories (karkhanas).
  • 3 - South India
    pp 315-324
  • View abstract

    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.
  • XI - Inland Trade
    pp 325-359
  • View abstract

    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.
  • XII - The Monetary System and Prices
    pp 360-381
  • View abstract

    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.

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