Local Agrarian Societies in Colonial India: Japanese Perspectives PDF
Preview Local Agrarian Societies in Colonial India: Japanese Perspectives
LOCAL AGRARIAN SOCIETIES IN COLONIAL INDIA Japanese Perspectives Centre of South Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London COLLECTED PAPERS ON SOUTH ASIA 10. Institutions and Ideologies D. Arnold & P. Robb 11. Local Agrarian Societies in Colonial India P. Robb, K. Sugihara & H. Yanagisawa COLLECTED PAPERS ON SOUTH ASIA NO. 11 LOCAL AGRARIAN SOCIETIES IN COLONIAL INDIA Japanese Perspectives Edited by Peter Robb, Kaoru Sugihara and Haruka Yanagisawa ~l Routledge ~ ~ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1996 by Curzon Press Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4R N 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 USA Routledge is an imprint olthe Taylor & Francis Group, an injiJrma business © 1996 Peter Robb, Kaoru Sugihara and Haruka Yanagisawa All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library o.lCongress in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 978-0-7007 -04 71-2 (Hbk) ISBN 978-1-3150-2674-9 (eISBN) COmENTS Contributors and acknowledgements vi 1.1 Distinctive aspects of rural production in India: the colonial period Peter Robb 1 1.2 Internal forces of change in agriculture: India and Japan compared Kaoru Sugihara with Haruka Yanagisawa 48 2 The mirasi system and local society in pre-colonial South India Tsukasa Mizushima 77 3 The peasantry of northern Bengal in the late eighteenth century Shinkichi Taniguchi 146 4.1 Elements of upward mobility for agricultural labourers in Tamil districts, 1865-1925 Haruka Yanagisawa 199 4.2 A comparison with the Japanese experience Haruka Yanagisawa 239 5 Regional patterns of land transfer in late colonial Bengal Nariaki Nakazato 250 6.1 Famines, epidemics and mortality in northern India, 1870-1921 Kohei Wakimura 280 6.2 Famines and epidemics: a comparison between India and Japan Osamu Saito 311 7.1 Technology and labour absorption in the indigenous Indian sugar industry: an analysis of appropriate technology Yukihiko Kiyokawa and Akihiko Ohno 320 7.2 Technology of the Indian sugar industry from an international perspective Yukihiko Kiyokawa and Akihiko Ohno 356 8 Situating the Malabar TenancyAct, 1930 Toshie Awaya 365 v CON1RIBUTORS Toshie Awaya Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo Yukihiko Kiyokawa Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Tsukasa Mizushima Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Nariaki Nakazato Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo Akihiko Ohno Faculty of Economics, Osaka City University Peter Robb Department of History, SOAS, University of London Osamu Saito Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Kaoru Sugihara Department of History, SOAS, University of London Shinkichi Taniguchi Faculty of Economics, Hitotsubashi University Kohei Wakimura Faculty of Economics, Osaka City University Haruka Yanagisawa Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume originated in a conference held in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), in July 1992. We are grateful to SOAS and to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture for financial support, for the conference and this publication. We are also grateful for assistance to Miss Janet Marks, until June 1995 Executive Officer of the Centre of South Asian Studies, and to Mrs. Catherine Lawrence (for maps and figures). Dr Michael Hutt has assisted as the chairman of the Centre's Publications Committee, responsible for the series in which this volume appears. Camera-ready copy for the volume has been prepared in SOAS. Peter Robb, Kaoru Sugihara, and Haruka Yanagisawa vi Chapter 1.1 DISTINCTIVE ASPECTS OF RURAL PRODUCTION IN INDIA: THE COLONIAL PERIOD! Peter Robb This volume collects papers on the rural economy of India, all written by Japanese scholars. They were originally presented in London at the School of Oriental and Mrican Studies, as part of an extensive investi gation of agriculture and economic organisation, undertaken by histori ans and economists from India, North America and Europe. The propo sition was that there is a need for a new vocabulary to describe Indian conditions. We kept the Japanese papers separate then, and do so again in this book, because our inquiry was partly into concepts and different ways of understanding data. And these papers do reveal some distinctive features. First, their implicit model derives from what happened in Japan, not in the West. This aspect is discussed in most of the papers, in the second introduction, and in special comparisons. Secondly, the papers show an eagerness to collect, adjust and then calculate from quantitative data. This contrasts with the scepticism often shown, at least by Western-trained historians of India, about the value of such records.2 Thirdly. the papers tend to focus on the actuality of production ! I am grateful for comments and suggestions by other contributors to the volume, especially during a day-long seminar on a draft of this introduction at the University of Tokyo in November 1993. 2 This aspect speaks for itself in the papers which follow, but I will also make a few comments about particular cases. In my view, elaborate compu tations are problematic because the data are often suspect, and debates about figures can quickly become sterile or self-generating; there is no substitute for fully contextual, empirical, historical analysis-for political economy. It would be ironic to urge economic historians to take the figures more seri ously, at a time when, among economists, econometrics and ahistorical theory seem somewhat in retreat (for example in new institutional eco nomics, for which a broader understanding of political economy, such as will be proposed here, is required). And yet it is obvious that the concrete edge provided by statistics (if only for internal comparisons) may lead to questions which otherwise cannot be answered, and thus provide some valu ably different hypotheses. I believe these papers do this. 2 LOCAL AGRARIAN SOClETIES IN COLONIAL INDIA decisions and processes---often, that is, on micro- rather than macro economic aspects.3 Finally, the papers disaggregate decisions and iden tify roles at different levels of the society and in production.4 The last two of these characteristics together comprise one common aspect of the papers on which my introduction will concentrate. They provide, I suggest, important perspectives especially on the connection between social and institutional structures and economic development. This introduction offers a personal view of the findings: it will not cover all aspects or try to treat all of the papers in equal depth. It is one reading of the texts, and not intended to preclude others. One way of considering these papers is in the context of debates about the nature of economic change. Central themes of the debates, to present them in caricature, include the independent role of the market in the 'modem' era, as against the predominance of social and political forces in pre-capitalist societies. Though production, specialisation and exchange always occur, according to some theories it is only in some places and times that they occupy an autonomous sphere, governed by a market rationale. Thus trade for profit is seen as an incubus which breaks open societies, a cuckoo outgrowing the pre-capitalist nest. The argument generalises many explanations of development from outside- 3 This is necessary and welcome, though it may imply methodological conclusions that these scholars (and social scientists generally) do not find congenial: namely that, in economic history, the way through the 'smoke cloud' of ideology, concepts and generalisation, is to attempt specific stud ies of physical contexts, material culture, social organisation, and produc tion, doing so in contact with broader issues but without the expectation of reaching anyone precise and detailed answer to large questions, like a sin gle law of physics. See Peter Robb, 'British rule and Indian "improve ment''', Economic History Review 34, 4 (November 1981), pp.507-23. Thus we might consider, say, national economies only as analytical con structs, which is what they are-without hope of a definitive 'why', but with a good chance of showing 'what' and 'how' within the limits of the model applied. The limitation is relevant to the comparisons between India and Japan which arise here as elsewhere. 4 See Peter Robb, 'Peasants' choices? Indian agriculture and the limits of commercialization in nineteenth-century Bihar', Economic History Review 45, 1 (February 1992), pp.97-119, notably pp.98-101 and 108-9. Tani guchi's paper in this volume in particular might be read as a companion piece to this article, but similarities will also be demonstrated with other essays. DISTINCfNE ASPECfS 3 feudal Europe from medieval cities, pre-capitalist Asia from European expansion. There are contrary views which attribute change also to non economic or to indigenous factors, but the end-product usually remains a 'capitalist' society. The debates about these processes are particularly pertinent at the moment with regard to South Asia, because of recent studies which are transforming our view of the eighteenth century and hence of the nature of nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments.5 The papers in this volume do not reflect directly upon these questions: as said, they are written against a different set of theories and preoccupations. But for that reason they may offer new insights. My own position is that, although economic developments obviously occur, the trajectory is not from a world without markets to one in which the market determines the whole of economic life.6 In particular there are, in all societies, independent roles at different levels of political and economic processes. There are, in 'pre-modem' societies, specialist intermediaries operating between producers and consumers, including merchants but also various kinds of managers and agents; moreover, there are also individual profit motives rather than only priorities of state or society (that is, change seeking as well as equilibrium-maintenance). On the other hand, in 'modem' societies, there are non-IIUUKet forces, including some working through intermediaries; there are political and social strategies which qualify the maximising of profit. Thus though there may be exchange without profit (or trade without the market), these features are not confined to particular kinds of societies. Among what I take to be current arguments, I endorse the follow ing.7 (1) The market is a social as well as an economic arena. (2) It is necessary to disaggregate within as well as between economic roles. (3) Social transformation does not occur from influences of a single type a whether merchants and demography (that is, economic forces, fa Pirenne) or autonomous developments in politics and class structure 5 See Sanjay Subrabmanyam (ed.), Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India (Delhi 1990), especially the introduction. 6 See Robb, 'Peasant choices'. 7 They are adapted from Subrabmanyam, Merchants, Markets, pp.1-17.
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