State and Economy in India over Seven Hundred Years

Indian economic history has tended to develop as a series of selfcontained specialisms. One area of expertise grew up around the analysis of the agrarian taxation of the Mughal empire of the seventeenth century. Heavily reliant on Persian documents, it has flourished in India, particularly at the Aligarh Muslim University. Another area intensively studied has been India's pattern of external trade during the era of the Portuguese, Dutch and English expansions. This work has been based on the papers of the European trading companies importing Indian textiles. A third well-trodden area has been the theory and practice of the revenue systems introduced by British colonial administrators in the nineteenth century as they transformed Mughal taxation of the agrarian product into a true tax on land owned. Yet neither the polemics between nationalists and apologists for empire at the end of the last century nor more recent forays into development economics have welded these disparate specialisms into a unified and comparative area of study.1 Against this background the achievement of the Cambridge Economic History of India is outstanding. Here for the first time it is possible to attain an overview of Indian economic history by reading a series of short but authoritative chapters. To anyone who has to try to teach or to learn this subject the value of these volumes is very great whatever one's disagreements in detail or preferred ideological bias. At the same time the main weakness of the CEHI is a reflection of this strength. The process of integration has begun, but it has not been pushed very far. It is difficult here to gain a broad impression of how the Indian economy might have changed over time or how features such as demography, foreign trade, agricultural production and state policy might have acted on each other. This article does not seek to offer a critique of these volumes as a whole; that would certainly be presumptuous and probably impossible. Instead it uses the CEHI in conjunction with work which has appeared since the early

Economics · Economy · Geography · Political science · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Global Financial Crisis and Policies · Indian Economic and Social Development · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

• The Colonial State, Capital and the Peasantry in Bombay Presidency

  Open Access•Vasant Kaiwar•Modern Asian Studies•1994

  Añadir item

• Disarticulation of the World

  Open Access•Frank Perlin•Comparative Studies in Society…•1988

  Añadir item

• Famine policies in pre‐British India and the question of moral economy

  Habibul Haque Khondker•South Asia Journal of South Asian…•1986

  Añadir item

• Advertisements, Proprietary Heterosexuality, and Hundis

  Open Access•Geeta Patel•Rethinking Marxism•2012

  Añadir item

• From families to formal contracts

  Open Access•Krishna B Kumar, John G Matsusaka•Journal of Development Economics•2008

  Añadir item

• Consumption of Cotton Cloth in India, 1795–1940

  Open Access•Tushar Roy•Australian Economic History Review•2012

  Añadir item

• El comercio exterior, la protoindustria y América Latina en el siglo XIX

  Open Access•Carlos Riojas•Revista Trace•2016

  Añadir item

• Agricultura y protoindustrialización

  Open Access•Carlos Riojas•Relaciones Estudios de Historia y…•2013

  Añadir item

• The Great Depression and Indian Industry

  Open Access•Colin Simmons•Modern Asian Studies•1987

  Añadir item

• Peasants'choices? Indian agriculture and the limits of commercialization in nineteenth-century Bihar1

  Open Access•Peter Robb•The Economic History Review•1992

  Añadir item

• The Zamindars' Share in the Peasant Surplus in the Mughal Empire—Evidence of the Ain-i-Akbari Statistics

  Open Access•Shireen Moosvi•The Indian Economic & Social…•1978

  Añadir item

• The Crisis of Bengal Agriculture, 1870-1927— the Dynamics of Immobility

  Open Access•Rajat Kanta Ray•The Indian Economic & Social…•1973

  Añadir item

• The Business World of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy

  Open Access•Asiya Siddiqi•The Indian Economic & Social…•1982

  Añadir item

• Money and Prices in the Earlier Stages of Empire

  Open Access•Asiya Siddiqi•The Indian Economic & Social…•1981

  Añadir item

• The Deindustrialization of India in the Nineteenth Century

  Open Access•Marika Vicziany•The Indian Economic & Social…•1979

  Añadir item

• The Great Depression and British Financial Policy in India, 1929-34

  Open Access•Dietmar Rothermund•The Indian Economic & Social…•1981

  Añadir item

• International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy Circa 1530-1650

  William S Atwell•Past & Present•1982

  Añadir item

• Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia

  Frank Perlin•Past & Present•1983

  Añadir item

• Political Systems in Eighteenth Century India

  Bernard S Cohn, Bernard Cohn•Journal of the American Oriental…•1962

  Añadir item

• "British Rule and Indian "Improvement

  Open Access•Peter Robb•The Economic History Review•1981

  Añadir item

• Of white whale and countrymen in the eighteenth-century Maratha Deccan. extended class relations, rights, and the problem of rural autonomy under the old regime1

  Frank Perlin•The Journal of Peasant Studies•1978

  Añadir item