Barriers to Economic Development in Traditional Societies

Malabar, A Case Study

Bibliographic Data

ID4912007
AuthorsThomas W Shea (corresponding author)
Year1959
Volume19
Issue4
Pages504-522
Publication date1959-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Economic History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0507 • E-ISSN: 1471-6372
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022050700085958
OpenAlexW1870811638
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited5

The district of Malabar on the Southwest coast of India has been a major exporter of a wide variety of agricultural products to Europe for more than two thousand years. Despite the two millenia of sustained contact between agricultural producers and merchants, however, social relationships in land are, even today, of a predominantly feudal character; cultivation techniques are generally primitive, and the rural portion of the district, notwithstanding the great commercial importance of its produce, appears to be surprisingly impoverished. How could the social and economic organization of a people so long exposed to the influence of world market activity remain so little affected by the currents of economic change and development in the outside world? The purpose of this article is to explore, by the study of this extreme example, the reasons for the apparent failure of a pattern of sustained economic growth to become established in a rural area exposed to continuing commercial influences

Agricultural economics · Agriculture · Business · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Feudalism · Geography · Political science · Rural area · Social change · Variety (cybernetics) · Indian Economic and Social Development · World Systems and Global Transformations

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