Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Bombay Presidency 1850-1935

335 Pages·1985·7.12 MB·English

by  Neil Charlesworth

CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
PEASANTS & IMPERIAL RULE
CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
These monographs are published by the Syndics of Cambridge University Press in
association with the Cambridge University Centre for South Asian Studies. The
following books have been published in this series:
1 S. Gopal: British Policy in India, 1858-1905
2 J. A. B. Palmer: The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857
3 A. Das Gupta: Malabar in Asian Trade, 1740-1800
4 G. Obeyesekere: Land Tenure in Village Ceylon
5 EL Erdman: The Swatantra Party and Indian Conservatism
6 S. N. Mukherjee: Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth-Century British
Attitudes to India
7 Abdul Majed Khan: The Transition in Bengal, 1756-1775: A Study of Saiyid
Muhammad Reza Khan
8 Radhe Shyam Rungta: The Rise of Business Corporations in India, 1851-1900
9 Pamela Nightingale: Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784-1806
10 Amiya Kumar Bagchi: Private Investment in India, 1900-1939
11 Judith M Brown: Gandhi's Rise to Power: Indian Politics, 1915-1922
12 Mary C. Carras: The Dynamics of Indian Political Factions
13 P. Hardy: The Muslims of British India
14 Gordon Johnson: Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism
15 Marguerite S. Robinson: Political Structure in a Changing Sinhalese Village
16 Francis Robinson: Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United
Provinces' Muslims, 1860-1923
17 Christopher John Baker: The Politics of South India, 1920-1937
18 David Washbrook: The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency,
1870-1920
19 Deepak Nayyar: India's Exports and Export Policies in the 1960s
20 Mark Holmstrom: South Indian Factory Workers: Their Life and Their World
21 S. Ambirajan: Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India
22 M M. Islam: Bengal Agriculture 1920-1946: A Quantitative Study
23 Eric Stokes: The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant
Rebellion in Colonial India
24 Michael Roberts: Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in
Sri Lanka, 1500-1931
25 John Toye: Public Expenditure and Indian Development Policy 1960-1970
26 Rashid Amjad: Private Industrial Investment in Pakistan 1960-1970
27 Arjun Appadurai: Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case
28 C.A. Bayly: Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of
British Expansion, 1770-1870
29 Ian Stone: Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change
in a Peasant Economy
30 Rosalind O'Hanlon: Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low
Caste Protest in 19th Century Western India
31 Ayesha Jalal: The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for
Pakistan
32 Neil Charlesworth: Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in
the Bombay Presidency, 1850-1935
33 Claude Markovits: Indian Business and Nationalist Politics 1931-9: The Indigenous
Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party
PEASANTS
AND IMPERIAL RULE
Agriculture and Agrarian Society in
the Bombay Presidency, 1850-1935
NEIL CHARLESWORTH
Lecturer in Economic History, University of Glasgow
K12SS
LIBHAHY
I-JOTFGaSALE
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First published 1985
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Library of Congress catalogue card number: 84-9603
ISBN 0 52123206 6 hardback
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To Rex and Lavinia Charlesworth

CONTENTS
List of maps and tables page ix
Preface x
Note on technical terms and references xi
Maps xii
1 Introduction: the peasant in India and Bombay
Presidency 1
The Bombay Presidency, 1850-1935 10
2 The village in 1850: land tenure, social structure and
revenue policy 17
The Deccan and the Southern Maratha Country 19
The Konkan 30
Gujarat 34
British revenue policy and the village 40
The ryotwari system and its enemies 47
Revenue policy and social structure in the Bombay village 65
3 The village in 1850: land and agriculture 70
Credit and rural trade 82
4 Indebtedness and the Deccan Riots of 1875 95
The official response 115
5 Continuity and change in the rural economy, 1850-
1900 125
Expansion and contraction, 1850-1880 134
A renewed expansionary cycle, 1880-1896 142
The famine problem, 1896-1900 155
Continuity and change in the agrarian economy, 1850-
1900 159
6 The Bombay peasantry, 1850-1900: social stability or
social stratification? 162
The evidence: deductions from patterns of economic
change 165
The evidence: land tenure and social structure 174
Identifying the rich peasantry 192
viii Contents
7 The agricultural economy, 1900-1935: the critical
watershed? 204
Before the depression: expansion and inflation 210
The agricultural depression and its legacy 225
The problem of land ownership and organisation 231
8 The impact of government policy, 1880-1935 239
The policy debates, 1880-1935 240
The impact of the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act 252
The impact of administrative action 260
The influence of official policy 267
9 The peasant and politics in the early twentieth
century 268
'Poor peasant polities': tenant protest in the Konkan 271
'Rich peasant politics' in the Deccan and Gujarat 276
The Bardoli campaign of 1928: the middle peasant in
politics? 283
The peasantry and politics in the Bombay Presidency 289
10 Conclusions: the problem of differential
commercialisation 292
Glossary 301
Bibliography 303
Index 315
MAPS
1 The Bombay Presidency in the British period page xv
2 Gujarat, showing British administrative divisions xvi
3 The Deccan, showing British administrative divisions xvii
4 The Southern Maratha Country, showing British adminis-
trative divisions xviii
5 The Konkan, showing British administrative divisions xix
TABLES
1 Ownership of land by Marwaris in certain villages of Poona
District, 1874-5 105
2 Prices of jowar in three taluks, 1866-1910 132
3 Increases in numbers of carts in Satara District, 1860s-
1890s 146
4 Estimated landownership by 'non-agriculturists': the land
transfer enquiry, late 1890s 194-5
5 Estimated landownership by 'non-agriculturists': the record
of rights enquiry in the Deccan, 1910s 197
6 Estimated landownership by 'non-agriculturists': the com-
pleted record of rights enquiry, 1917 197
7 Foodgrain price trends, 1900-22 209
8 Changes in district patterns of cotton cultivation, 1914/15—
1924/5 216
9 Increases in land revenue in districts of Bombay during the
late nineteenth century 265
IX
PREFACE
This book has been a long time in the making. My work on the subject of
the Bombay peasantry in the British period began when I was a research
student at Cambridge in the early 1970s and has continued since then
during my time at Glasgow. Over this period I have incurred many debts.
Financially, I have been assisted by the Social Science Research Council,
which sponsored my original research, Cambridge University, through
the award of the Holland Rose Studentship, and Glasgow University,
with a number of additional grants. I am grateful to librarians and
archivists, in particular in four institutions: the Maharashtra State
Archives in Bombay, the India Office Library and Records and the
University Libraries of Cambridge and Glasgow.
Academically, I have benefited enormously from the fertile climate of
debate in South Asian history which existed at Cambridge while I was
there and also, since, from numerous valuable discussions with
colleagues and friends at Glasgow. It would be invidious to name names
but many may notice here the influence of their ideas and I am grateful to
them. One academic debt is, however, so fundamental that it must be
specifically recorded. The late Professor Eric Stokes first suggested the
subject as an area of research to me in 1969 and thereafter as supervisor
and friend constantly supported the work's development until his
untimely death in February 1981. It is a source of deep regret to me that
this book was not published during his lifetime. At least, I can record here
the very great debt which I owe to him and to the example of scholarship
and academic comradeship which he set.
I am very grateful to Mrs Blythe O'Driscoll, our departmental sec-
retary, who typed the manuscript with notable calmness and efficiency.
My wife and daughters, once again, provided essential support
throughout and a congenial domestic atmosphere for writing. However,
this book is dedicated to my parents, without whose consistent help and
encouragement I would never have enjoyed an academic career.
Glasgow
December 1983