From Little King to Landlord

Property, Law, and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement

Bibliographic Data

ID2107579
AuthorsNicholas B Dirks (California Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year1986
Volume28
Issue2
Pages307-333
Publication date1986-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417500013888
OpenAlexW2027766922
LanguageEN
Citations received30
References cited23

In the last few years, modern historians of India have pushed the historical frontier of their field backwards in time. Colonialism is no longer considered the great watershed it once was thought to be. Historians who concern themselves with economic processes such as protoindustrialization tend in particular to minimize the impact of the consolidation of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Changes viewed as significant by these historians usually begin with the introduction of capitalism and the early encroachment of a world system, both of which predate the full political realization of colonialism. Historians who concern themselves with political changes tend in the other direction, although increasingly they have proposed major continuities between theancien régimeand the early colonial state. Historians concerned with social change view colonialism as significant but invoke various new forms of dualism to account for the limited effects of colonialism on local social forms. Whatever their differences, all of these historians agree that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are crucial for viewing later changes in economy, polity, and society, and, from their varying theoretical and ideological perspectives, delight in excoriating traditional views of India as static and 'traditional' before the arrival of the British

Capitalism · Colonialism · Consolidation (business · Dominion · Economic history · Economics · Frontier · Ideology · Landlord · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Settlement (finance · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law

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