Elements of continuity and change in 18th century India.

There are two themes that dominate any study of the 18th century. The first deals with the idea, enforced consistently by traditional historiography, that the century was one of decline and stagnation. The other, more complicated theme, searches for possible elements of continuity and change that characterised the century. The study of these themes produces a rare irony, one where the debates on alleged ‘stagnation’, ‘decline’, ‘continuity’ and ‘change’ make the period a thoroughly dynamic and interesting period of study.

From the topic we need to mark the operative words- ‘continuity’ and ‘change’. The topic also forces us to understand them in the spatial context of India, in the time context of the 18th century.

That there occurred an interregnum from the time of Mughal decline to the time when British power was safely ensconced in the subcontinent, and that colonialism struck its roots in course of this century in India, constitute two indubitable facts. Also agreed upon are the facts that the former constituted the most significant development in the first half of the eighteenth century, while the latter occurred in the second half of the century. The debate on continuity and change has, so far, largely revolved around the early colonial period.

But since the question forces us to understand continuity and change in course of the 18th century, this essay shall attempt an examination of continuity and change not only in the early colonial period but also in the early eighteenth century, which was witness to the breakdown of Mughal rule and the emergence of regional power. Further, the early historiography for the early eighteenth century assessed the Mughal Empire in terms of the character of the ruling elites. Here, we shall explore continuity and change in the early eighteenth century within these set paradigms.

The political climate of 18th century India was volatile. Declining Mughal power was accompanied by a gradual autonomization of the territories that had been under its hold. Having reached it climactic phase by the late Seventeenth century, Mughal power, following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, weakened under the aegis of insipid rulers who were undermined in their exercise of power by the rise of powerful nobles like Zulfiqar khan, Abdullah khan and Jusain Ali Khan Barahow; nobles, whose skills for conspiracy and connivance earned them the epithet ‘king makers’. Jahandar Shah (1712-13), Farrukh Siyar (1713-19) and Mohammad Shah (1719-48) presided over the last years of a dying era where the resuscitation of Mughal dominance, in the context of inchoate Maratha power, Rajput subservience, limited Company role and the extant psychological position of the Mughal as an all-India unifying force, was possible but was never attempted.

While an inquest into Mughal decline would warrant a more elaborate discussion, it is certain that the assertion of local and regional forces accentuated the territorial break up and decline of the dynasty. Nurul Hasan, in his discussion of Zamindars points out that the decline of the Mughals was facilitated by an internal contradiction that lay in the relationship between the centralizing powers of the state and the parochial tendencies of the Zamindars. Early twentieth century Historians like Jadunath Sarkar interpreted the powerful resistance of the Maratha, Sikh and Jats as reflective of ‘Hindu resistance’ to Aurangzeb’s (alleged) bigotry.

Irfan Habib, in his sagacious study of the Mughal Empire, explained the cause of Mughal decline in fiscal terms. He argues that the revolts, which took the shape of peasant uprisings, were products of economic oppression caused by the proliferation of Mansabdars and exorbitant Mughal revenue exactions. However, the occurrence of these revolts in relatively prosperous regions, and the Zamindar leadership that propelled them, makes Habib’s exploitation-poverty-resistance causal chain untenable.

Athar Ali attributed Mughal decline to the administrative and economic crisis caused by the shortage of Jagirs with the political expansion into less fertile regions like the Deccan; an argument challenged by JF Richards.

Other explanations view Mughal decline as a result of a ‘cultural failure’ that made the empire politically and economically vulnerable. But most of these explanations, as Seema Alavi points out, took no cognisance of the regional and local articulation of power in the period of transition. Ashin Das Gupta who emphasised the role of corporate mercantile institutions, and Grover who emphasised the development of local rural commerce in the provincial markets in the subcontinent despite Mughal decline and English competition, put forth significant studies that focussed on regional economies. Stein and Stewart Gordon explain the eighteenth century transition through war and pillage and its linkages with regional economies. Burton Stein, having formulated military fiscalism, argues that the nourishment of large military establishments in the context of war made consistent and regular revenue collections crucial. This was achieved in many parts of south India through the involvement of the military in revenue collections. Thus war and military mobilization constituted the basis of change.

These internal imbalances, coupled with external factors like the series of debilitating invasions by Nadir Shah in 1739 followed by Ahmad Shah Abdali, and increasingly frequent disruptions in bullion flows from Europe, over which the Mughal financial system had grown increasingly dependent, resulted in the steady attenuation of Mughal power.

In course of the 18th century, on the debris of the Mughal Empire, arose a large number of independent and semi-independent powers. Chandra identifies three types of states that emerged. States like Bengal, Awadh and Hyderabad, which arose as a result of the assertion of autonomy by governors of Mughal provinces in the context of decaying central power are called ‘succession states’. Others, such as the Maratha, Afghans, Jats and Punjab were the products of rebellions led by local chieftains, Zamindars and peasants against Mughal authority. Chandra further speaks of a ‘third zone’ of states that comprised of the areas on the southwest and southeast coasts and of northeast India where Mughal penetration was not experienced.

That there occurred a dispersal of political power from the centre to regions is undeniable. It is also true that after the relative stability of the preceding centuries when Mughal power had existed as an indomitable force, the centrifugal flow of political and administrative powers in the first half of the 18th century amounted to a significant change. But it is important to question whether the rise of new states marked the rise of a new political and structural order; that the change was radical; that it marked a defining break.

The emergent regional powers developed in a milieu peculiar to their local conditions, and its influence in their state systems cannot be doubted. But was this a change at a fundamental level? A change at the base?

 An examination of the subcutaneous layers of these states will reveal some undeniable strands of continuity.

Among the foremost proponents of continuity is Christopher Bayly, who argues that regional political crystallization was the result of, among other things, the emergence of a new class of intermediaries comprised of a cross caste mercantile organisation that involved itself in politics. These revenue-collecting intermediaries who drew on Mughal military and fiscal institutions emerged as power centres in this period of transition; they provided the basis of regional political formations.

In the altered political climate where the idea of Mughal dominance existed at a level more psychological than real, it was the importance of the Mughals as a symbolic, de jure source of legitimacy that the regional powers exploited. The Mughal emperor, even in this situation where the legendary Mughal power was all but defunct, was as Christopher Bayly puts it, the “highest manifestation of sovereignty”. This gave rise to a paradox; one where the Mughal emperor provided legitimacy to local assertions of power; where central authority facilitated the development of autonomous authority; where the empire presided over its own dissolution.

The rulers of the new 18th century states legitimised their rule by acknowledging the nominal supremacy of the Mughal emperor and by even seeking his approval as his representatives. Chandra points out how Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah of Hyderabad waged wars, concluded peace and conferred titles without reference to Delhi but never explicitly declared his independence. Similarly, Murshid Quli Khan even after exercising effective power of Bengal sent large tributes to the Mughal emperor. Muslim nawabs such as those of Carnatic and the Sikhs took part in ceremonial acknowledgements of Mughal power. 

Further, many of these states continued with the methods of Mughal administration and revenue collection. The continuation of such administrative and revenue structures must have been much stronger in the successor states like Hyderabad, Bengal and Awadh, which had experienced the transition from Mughal suba to autonomous powers. Regionally based state systems retained elements of Mughal administration and the Muslim service gentry and Hindu scribes learned in Persian continued to be the mainstay of the administrative apparatus in these states.

Chandra states that the rulers of the new fragmented states of the 18th century ‘established law and order’ and stable rule. This opens to us the discussion on whether decentralization per se meant an inevitable descent to anarchy and chaos. Is the association of political stability in the context of political decentralization repugnant? Should decentralization imply anarchy? Was general stability something that seemed unachievable in a political milieu marked by fragmented autonomous states as it did in 18th century India? 

There is a good amount of evidence to show that the states of the 18th century enjoyed a modicum of stability. Not that the element of uncertainty and volatility did not exist, but surely the situation was distant from ‘anarchic’. Nizam Ul mulk Asaf Jah of Hyderabad, for instance, consolidated his power by establishing orderly administration in the Deccan and forced powerful, turbulent Zamindars to respect his authority. Similarly, Saadat Khan Burhan Ul Mulk and Safdar Jang crushed contumacious Zamindars and maintained order. The nawabs of Bengal put a remarkable effort in securing a long period of peace and stability in their kingdom, something that is logically inferred from the economic prosperity the kingdom experienced. Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore extended full control over the rebellious poligars and maintained stability in their kingdom with the conscious understanding that internal security was necessary for trade and economic development.

The notion of ‘anarchy’ and ‘degeneration’ attached with decentralization can also be countered by an examination of the character and nature of the new regional regimes in the 18th century. Bipin Chandra, in his usual nationalist Marxist approach, views Nizam Ul Mulk, Saadat khan, Murshid Quli Khan as ‘men of a high personal morality’. Chandra’s assessments apart, there is evidence to show that many of these new rulers were capable individuals who possessed eclectic and innovative facets. Marthanda Varma Raja, the ruler of Travancore, was a leading statesman whose achievement in constructing a modern arsenal and munificence in his patronage of arts and literature are well known. The remarkable Rajput ruler Raja Sawai Jai Singh of Amber made his scientific proclivities apparent by constructing the Jantar mantar, by founding Jaipur along scientific principles, erecting observatories with advanced instruments and by translating major scientific works like Euclid’s Elements of Geometry in Sanskrit. Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Sikhs built a powerful army along European lines and set modern foundries to manufacture cannon. 

Tipu sultan of Mysore stands out as a unique ruler in the 18th century. He possessed a complex character. He was an innovator, a reformer and a statesman. Barun De perceives Tipu as a ‘distinctly alternative element’ in the 18th century political culture. Beside his implacable detestation for the British, he was among the only rulers to recognise state power and it’s commercial capacity; that economic strength underpinned military strength. De explores the implications of the dialectics of Sufi plebeian militancy in the family tradition and cognomen of Tipu sultan. De discovers that there existed two parts to his lineage- part Sufi servitor and part military adventurer, amounting to a social position well below that of contemporaneous ruling elites of 18th century India. De also identifies a deeper ‘Dervish streak’ in Tipu’s struggle against encirclement. It was their non-elite and plebeian character that made dervishes ‘alternatives’ to the Deccan landed gentry elite. This conjoined with a sense of helplessness and insecurity among people made possible Haider Ali and Tipu sultan’s accession as ‘new national popular alternatives’ in Karnataka.

It is hard to overlook the religious policy followed by these rulers. In most cases, it appears, that the politics of the period was secular and the courts of rulers like Asaf Jha, Saadat khan, Hyder Ali and Murshid Quli khan comprised of Hindus and Muslims. Further, many of the new states were led by ‘Muslim’ rulers. The approach to religious communities is more debated when it comes to Tipu Sultan. The colonial portrayal of Tipu sultan is of him having been an unmitigated Muslim fanatic. Rejecting this and others portrayals by Wilk and Sen, Subbaraya Chetty highlights data related to endowments made by the sultan to Hindu institutions attempting to show the sultans tolerance. Saletore goes a step further by calling Tipu sultan as a defender of the Hindu Dharma. George Moreas however, is more critical when he states that no ‘justification can be pleaded’ for the ‘high-handedness’ with which Tipu made the entire Christian community pay for the crimes of few men. While Tipu’s religious polices and the veracity of his alleged bigotry can make for another debate, in this context it would suffice to argue that his- as much as any other 18th century Indian rulers- policies in dealing with religious communities within their domain should be understood partly, if not wholly, in the context of expediency which had made a degree of socio-religious harmony a priority.

This discussion on the nature of the new 18th century rulers may seem to be a digression from the principal focus of the topic. While this discussion serves to counter any tendency towards an instantaneous association of decentralization to anarchy, it also, in a deeper way, reflects an important element of change that had emerged in the 18th century ruling regimes. While continuity can be seen in the administrative structures, the dependence of the new states on the putative legitimising powers of the Mughals and in the fact that Muslim rulers led most of the new states, there is a clear dimension of change in the peculiarities of the regional states and in the somewhat eclectic character of their rulers. Change and continuity may have occurred in many more ways, but instead of delving into them, it would be adequate if we get the essence that the alteration in the 18th century political scene was characterised by both continuity and change.

This tendency to succumb to such simplistic associations transcends to the economic discussion of the period where the political instability leading to economic decline hypothesis is obtrusive and dominant. Political and economic life is not exclusive of the other, and there is not an iota of doubt that they are mutually interactive; but to exaggerate the impact of on one the other, and to argue that in the 18th century political volatility translated to acute economic turmoil is somewhat unreasoned and as a result, erroneous.

Tapan Raychaudhuri, in his incisive examination of the 18th century economy, develops this argument convincingly. Raychaudhuri states that an overall political instability in the wake of Mughal break up and decentralization had debilitated economic life in certain areas. For instance, Delhi declined, the Sikhs in course of their uprising blocked trade routes that led to the Lahore and Agra markets, flourishing urban centres of N.W India were in decay by the mid 18th century, cotton and silk manufacturers migrated to East Bengal, Surat declined, Maratha dominance in Gujarat led to decay in manufacturers, and this way many economic downswings were experienced. However, he questions whether political instability resulted in an epidemic, countrywide decline. A good amount of evidence, in particular the thriving economies of new provincial kingdoms like Bengal, Hyderabad, Awadh, Benares and rise of Bengal as opposed to Surat, shows no confirmation of all round economic decline.

Bayly, too, states that political decentralisation had encouraged the ‘growing economic vitality’ of places distant from the imperial capital at Delhi. He further attempts to rectify the picture of economic collapse by suggesting that the areas of decline were limited in extent. But, he adds that there were areas where political change had produced a serious decline in local commerce and agriculture. This decline, Bayly points out, was often a result of the ‘orderly movement of aristocracies, capital or skills from one centre to the another and the subsequent realignment of trade and production’; a movement that was more a regular than pathological feature of the 18th century social order.

Raychaudhuri states that the rural economy was characterised by the Jajmani system where the organization of production and distribution was centred around the institution of hereditary occupational castes with the non agricultural castes being recompensed by traditionally fixed shares of the village produce and, in some cases, by plots of land. While there is an exiguity of direct reference to this system in the sources for this period, the fact that this system subsisted till modern times, according to Raychowdhuri, is sufficient proof of its unbroken lineage from, and prevalence in the 18th century. Stein and Subramanyam however question whether customs dominated the village community such that one assumes the prevalence of Jajmani in the period. They cite the argument put forward by Simon Commander that in early colonial India labour payments were based on the logic of the market, evident in the fact that differential payments were allocated to differential labour requirements. 

Raychaudhuri also suggests continuity in Agrarian organisation. He sees a clear line of continuity in the Zamindari system of Bengal from pre to post permanent settlement era. There were two classes of cultivators- ‘owners’ with hereditary transferable rights and the others who paid revenues through these owners but possessed no indisputable occupancy rights (patta). Further, Jagirdars and Zamindars remained the two groups of extractors in the pre-colonial agrarian structure.

An important development in the 18th century was the movement towards increasing commercialisation. Muzaffar Alam, Bayly, Gordon and Wink have, in detail, emphasised the importance of agricultural production and commercialisation of agriculture in this period. Raychaudhuri cites the growing involvement of the farmers with trade and the substantial growth of non-food crop production as indicators of this increasing commercialisation. Sumit Guha, discussing the long run trends in the commercial economy in Western India (1700 to 1870), states that the growth of trade and commerce in the region was not confined to the supra village level as commodity circulation and credit flows significantly affected village consumption and production. Guha also discusses the functional relationship that existed between the village and city where he rejects Habib’s argument that the coercive Mughal revenue extractions and subsequent Zamindar led resistance led to the inevitable decline of towns and trade. This argument, Guha says, is predicated on the absence of reciprocal exchange between the village and town, thereby reducing their relationship to a merely tributary one. Guha questions whether such a one-sided functional relationship was possible, whether the villages could be so immune to the encroachments of city life and trade. Whether the rebelling Zamindars lived in such sequestered, isolated settings, detached from the dynamics of trade and city life. He argues how urbanisation, commercialisation and a reciprocal relation between village and town existed.

Technology in the 18th century was ‘backward’ ‘stagnant’, and an outcome of the great poverty of the Indian peasantry; one that also impaired his capacity to take risks, as Buchanan, in course of his journeys to Dakshin Canara gathered, that peasants were hesitant to take risks for the expenses in employing the new technology were greater while the returns were often small. Raychaudhuri points out that a striking fact about Indian agriculture in pre and early colonial days was its remarkable productivity and yield per acre. This paradox of poor technology and high productivity was owing to the high fertility of the soil. The tepidity of market demand and the tradition of specialised hereditary skills inbuilt into the caste system, inter alia, inhibited the possibilities of technological growth in India.

Manufacturing organisation also exhibited strong features of continuity. Raychaudhuri points out that Manufacturing remained a predominantly rural activity characterised by the Jajmani system. However, there are signs of increasing involvement of agricultural and rural manufacturers with the exchange and a money economy and credit became ‘a familiar fact of rural life’. Localized centres of manufacture emerged in both rural and urban areas and accompanying their formation was the phenomenon of increasing merchant control over production. This control was extended through the dadni system, which had the effect of invidiously binding the manufacturers to the merchant or the European trading company. A more profound change in the organisation of manufacturing was effected with the increasing practise of wage payments to the artisan, creating an employer- wageworker relationship; a development pregnant with the possibility of capitalistic development, according to some historians. The adoption of the joint stock principle by sections of the commercial class and the entrepreneurial spirit manifested in the development of a European style shipping were other significant developments; they were also indicative of a degree of dynamism and capacity for positive response to market stimuli.

Dynamism is also evinced in India’s pre-colonial overseas trade where the impetus according to Raychaudhuri was injected by foreign agency. Fragmented polities did not encumber the development of a thriving inland trade in grain, cloth and cattle. Corporate merchant institutions transcended political boundaries in overseeing the transportation of goods and the provision of credit and insurance facilities. Raychaudhuri suggests that inter regional trade and inland sea routes led to an incipient ‘national market’ by the 1720’s. The coastal regions of Gujarat, Coramandal and Bengal by now had close links in matters of money supply and commodity prices. This trend towards integration was facilitated, to a certain extent, by political instability as it affected credit markets where the use of bills in place of cash became increasingly common.

 ‘Stagnation’ or ‘decadence’ is most often and most easily attached to the Society of 18th century India. Here too, political anarchy spills over to create chaos in the social structures and practices, plunging it into degeneration. Raghuvanshi argues that the society in this period was not stagnant as major developments were experienced in religion and in the field of literature. Literacy, under the aegis of rajas and nawabs remained high till the late 18th century. It was only after colonial rule displaced local rulers that the levels of literacy began to fall.

Susan Bayly, in her discussion of the caste system in this period, points out that the nature of the caste system is reflected by the changing political system. The disappearance of overlords, landlords and magnates made the Kshatriya ideal less relevant to Indian culture. The position of women constitutes a contentious area of study. Sati was virtually non-existent in this south but flourished in the west particularly among the Rajputana states. Asis Nandy argues that the incidence of Sati was less before company rule than after, something he interprets as an indication of a new rising elite from the colonial process that used such practices to sanctify their social status.

Cultural efflorescence was seen in different regions. Hindi emerged as an adaptation of a particular dialect and became the dominant language in the 19th century. Urdu also registered growth, largely because of court patronage and administrative use. Instances of romanticism are seen in the late 18th century Bengali. Punjabi language saw the compilation of the dasam granth and the increasing popularity of the Qisa’s and Vars. In Assamese, the chronicles of the Ahom kings of Assam are indicative of some historical sense. Writing about the development of Tamil, Ramaswamy emphasises the role of religion with Tamil language where Tamil was claimed to be the language of the gods rather than the mother tongue of the region.

A survey of the dominant trends reveals that neither change, nor continuity singularly overwhelmed the politico – economic and cultural life in the 18th century. The issue of change and continuity becomes more pertinent and contentious in a discussion on the onset of British colonialism in the subcontinent. Was the battle of Plassey in 1757 an event that marked a massive break in Indian history, a break that was unprecedented and cataclysmic for it led to the insertion of an abstraction called colonialism in the 18th century Indian milieu? Or has its decisiveness been overemphasised. Was the basis for colonialism already present in India such that the occupation of Bengal only facilitated European colonialism to settle and gradually entrench itself? This conflict between ‘break’ and ‘indigenous roots’ (implying continuity) has been a matter of substantial debate, the protagonists of which have been the school of Nationalists Marxists, revisionists and the post revisionists.

Nationalists Marxist historians like Irfan Habib, N.K Sinha and R.K Mukherjee assert that colonialism was a disruptive force. The British conquest of Bengal was not any usual conquest; Bengal served as a springboard for further British expansionism. Plassey was an event that led to the full-blown development of colonialism in the subcontinent. The colonialism that emerged was not only inherently ‘alien’ in character but was also a product of capitalism. Habib, discussing the economic changes British rule initiated, argues that the grant of Diwani in 1765 reduced the bullion flows into India, caused inflation, intensified the drain of wealth from Bengal and, after 1813, large-scale deindustrialisation; these were developments that constituted a major break with the past.

 The nature of this colonialism stands out with the phenomena of the ‘drain of wealth’ from the Indian economy. This was, according to these historians, among the chief instruments of economic exploitation. The earliest proponent of the ‘drain of wealth’ theory was Dadabhai Naoroji who stated that earlier subcontinent regimes, howsoever despotic and economically exploitative, would dispense with their money in a manner by which it would circulate back into the native economy. The British and their practise of remittances to England resulted in a situation where money flowed to the English economy but there was no comparable material return for Indian economy. This unrequited transfer of money led to the drain of wealth and caused an unprecedented deprivation of the masses. Ranajit Guha views the introduction of the permanent settlement in Bengal as marking a clear break with the past. B.B chaudhury and Bhattacharya have pointed out that crucial changes were evident in the agrarian society with the permanent settlement, the most prominent being the increase in rural credit, sale of estates of defaulting Zamindars and the consequent creation of a land market, and also the phenomena of famines that caused rural depopulation. Ranajit Guha and Eric Stokes go further and point at the ‘innovative’ character of the Permanent Settlement, signalling a break from the pre colonial past.

Countering this assertion are the revisionist historians like Bayly, Subramanyam, Marshall and Stein among others who perceive the onset of colonialism as a gradual historical process. The focus here is on the pre-existing ‘indigenous roots’ of colonialism in pre-colonial India. They attribute the success of colonial rule to the manner in which it grafted itself over the indigenous networks of power and infrastructure. The rise of the Company State is seen as the culmination of the processes of revenue farming and military fiscalism that characterized the political economies of the regions in eighteenth century India. Transition and collaboration are the key words in this sort of argument, and the categories of portfolio capitalists and indigenous origins of colonialism become significant.

Stein disputes the notion that the nature of the British regime in India violently departed from that of previous Indian states by stating that ‘early colonial regimes’ were ‘continuations of prior indigenous regimes’. The period from the 1750 to 1850 was one of transition from extant old regimes to new colonial ones. There existed a structural contradiction in the pre – British state formations between the ‘centralising militaristic’ regimes and the numerous local lordships. The colonial state, Stein says, resolved this contradiction in favour of the centralising tendency of ‘military fiscalism’ inherited from the previous regimes, indicating a sign on continuity.

PJ Marshall continues on this theme by stating that the initial exercise of power by the colonial state did not mark any break with the Indian pattern of rule. The British, he says, maintained an outward respect for the existing Mughal forms and entered into partnerships with Indian tax administrators and bankers. Further, it was the buoyancy of the economy that made possible the high yields of British taxation. A dramatically distinct colonial order consisting of peculiar British modes of government and a new pattern of economic relations was to come at a stage much later.

Elaborating this point, Stein argues that it is only in the second half of the 19th century that the colonial state departs from the ‘Sultanate forms’, characterised by a patrimonial order based on personal loyalty and servility to the ruler, and establishes a regime based on modern European principles, thus marking a disjuncture from both – old indigenous and the early colonial regimes.

The revisionists, in stronger tone, argue that the Europeans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries achieved ‘on a larger and more ominous scale what Indian local rulers had been doing for the last century’. But the revisionists add that the Indians responded to this conquering thrust by turning into ‘active agents’ and not ‘passive victims’ in the creation of colonial India.

This assertion has some important implications, the most prominent being that it concretises the notion of Indian capitalism; one where the prodromes of capitalism, in terms of commodity production, trading and banking capital, existed and developed prior to colonial intervention.

Such a connection, according to Bayly, enables one to construct a narrative running from the pre colonial to the post colonial where the ‘Indian people are the subjects of history and not the objects of colonial rule’. Bayly also conceptualises ‘indigenous roots’ in two ways: firstly, it indicates that the pattern of European penetration of the subcontinent was limited and determined by the structure of the Indian commercial society, and secondly that the Indian social groups extended support to the emergent company and also to the later colonial rule.

Deeply connected to the concept of the indigenous roots is its relation to a Bayly- Subrahmanyam construct called ‘portfolio capitalists’. Distinguishing the sub groups within the broad and ‘amorphous’ category of merchants, these revisionists assert that there were, contrary to the idea of a neat demarcation of mercantile activity and politico-military power, some merchants who ‘straddled the worlds of commerce and political participation’. These figures emerged in south and north India only after the 16th century and were different from the great merchant families seen particularly in the north. Portfolio capitalists, as their name suggests, were merchants who participated in a panoply of activities from internal trade, revenue farming, warfare or military overlord ship to merchant banking and international trade. They however were fragile, volatile entities who depended on political favours. This fragility, Bayly elaborates, also stemmed from the fact that they were vulnerable to conflicts between the upper elites and intermediatery structures for while they represented the success of agrarian and military might conjoined with capital resources, they were also perceived by sovereign authorities as presenting a latent threat to their own rule. In fact the potential for power inherent in these merchants was such that they were, according to Bayly, close to making bids at sovereignty. This explains the occasionally tense relations that existed between these merchants and rulers, manifested in the specific case where the 18th century rulers of Farrukabad forbade their amildars from constructing fortified grain markets.

Further, since this merchant rested on his military force, he was vulnerable to internecine conflicts as well as to local rebellions. The portfolio capitalist also faced insecurity from his networks of credit and client groups that could withdraw without any sense for commitment or compunction.

Bayly argues that the stunning success of the English private trader could not have been possible had they depended on resources brought to Asia from Europe. This, in fact, would have been an insuperable task. This success is explicable only if the English had penetrated into existing indigenous networks, such as the networks of bazaar and mahajan finance which had supported the indigenous portfolio capitalist.

Company servants like Benfield, Lindsay and Alexander Brodie, men who on the basis of their amassed wealth were christened as nabobs, represent, according to Bayly and Subramanyam, the ‘lineal decedents of the Asian portfolio capitalists’. They inserted themselves into early modern states at a level that had earlier been defined for them by Asian portfolio capitalists.

Eventually, with the emergence of the colonial political economy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these characters disappeared from the political economy of the land.

Mercantile activity in the 18th century is an area of ongoing debate. Burton Stein makes stronger claims to the interpenetration of the merchants and indigenous states in the 18th century, describing their relationship as evidence of South Asian Mercantilism. The aim of this mercantilism was to raise the control of the state over resources as a result of which they become increasingly dependent on merchants. The need for merchant capital for state commercial systems and revenue farming led to a thoroughgoing penetration of the state by merchant interests. According to Stein, merchant access to state power at the end of the 18th century is reflected in the ability of merchant capital to subordinate labour.

The views of Prasannan Parthasarthi, to be discussed in detail later, have argued against the merchant state relation put forward by the revisionists.

The revisionist argument on colonialism, rejected by the nationalist Marxists like Habib who term it ‘pernicious’ for the manner in which it undermines it’s defining exploitative character, has been re-questioned by post revisionist historians like Sushil Chaudhury and Prasannan Parthasarthi.

The revisionists, however, do not represent a homogeneous body of historians subscribing to the same views. There exist divergences among them regarding the reasons behind the Company’s transition to becoming a political entity, and on the socio-economic impact of this change on India.

 Sushil Chaudhury tests the revisionist arguments by situating his study in the Mughal suba of Bengal (an early modern conglomerate of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa) and examining the nature of trade there from the period 1753 to 57. Reinforcing the earlier views propounded by the nationalist Marxists, Chaudhury states at the outset that in this period of ‘anarchy’ following Mughal disintegration Bengal existed as a ‘singular exception’. The conquest of Bengal according to him was not an adventitious event, and the importance that he associates with it as marking a dramatic change is explicitly seen by his reference to the event as the ‘Plassey revolution’.

Chaudhury laments about explanations given for the British conquest which emphasise the collapse of the nawabi-elite class alliance for it stunts any discussion on the cause of the conflict to an ‘internal crisis’. He rejects the ‘collaboration thesis’ for there exists no evidence that proves that the main source of income for the Zamindar banking class came through its connection with European trade.

Drawing a distinction between company trade and private trade, he asserts that it was the private trade of the company servants that was the motive force for the conquest. It was a crisis in this private trade- that started in the late 1730’s and 40’s and ebbed in early 1750’s- that propelled Plassey and the subsequent conquest. This crisis had its source in the East India Company rather than in the Bengal trade for Dutch trade marked an exponential growth in precisely this period. Chaudhury states that the vitriolic struggle between the French and British for commercial supremacy got intense in this period, and the British, in the face of declining private trade, were confronted with the threat posed by the burgeoning French private trade that had surpassed the growth achieved during the golden period under the intendancy of Duplex.

This pressure from the French was a critical factor in the British conquest, as also testified by Tapan Mohan Chaterjee who in his 1960 monograph on the battle of Plassey wrote copiously on the fierce struggle and eventual capitulation of the French at Chandernagore.

The crisis for the British specifically came from the crisis in the dadni system. Sushil Chaudhury delves into details to show that the change from dadni to gomastha was because of the reluctance of the dadni merchants to contract with the company. This resistance in the terms of advancements offered by the company was reflective of the strength of the Indian mercantile community, and also the Indian weavers. The latter being an interesting argument put forward by Prasannan Parthasarthi who on the basis of a comparison between real wages of south Indian and British weavers negates the presumption that the misery of the Indian weaver was responsible for the competitiveness of his goods. Parthasarthi’s convincing arguments, including those that present the Industrial Revolution as a technological response to the competitiveness of Indian textiles, must be accepted by taking note of his selective use of data from the Madras presidency, which he often uses to generalise for the entire south Indian situation. The prosperity of the weaver in south India, as Parthasarthi asserts, may not have corresponded to their counterparts in Bengal. But the weaver’s condition there was not one of misery and deprivation, as pointed out by Chaudhury who reveals that the Bengali weavers were far from being an indigent lot.

 

This strength of the mercantile community and the weavers becomes an important factor in the post revisionist argument for it emphasises the context in which British conquest took place; a context marked by British anxieties over its thinning dominance over Bengal commerce. Thus Plassey and conquest was not inevitable or part of a larger flow where British conquest became the logical conclusion of a process set in motion by indigenous forces. Instead, Plassey comes to herald a dramatic and decisive break.

Parthasarthi further critiques the revisionists. He perceives the category of ’portfolio capitalists’ as imprecise and points at the distinction that existed between the Merchant group and the banking group. While the former were involved with the artisans, the latter were involved with the state or in revenue farming. The monopolising south Indian mercantile states often competed with the merchants in order to maximise their revenues. This led to an inevitable exclusion of the merchants and made them seek an alternative in the trade with the east India Company. Parthasarthi argues that ‘portfolio capitalists’ obscures the processes and configurations whereby the merchants moved towards the East India Company.

‘Continuity ‘ and ‘change’, in literal meaning, represent two extremes, and to strictly view Indian history in the 18th century through these two distinct prisms would produce conclusions that will remain irreconcilable. There are valid arguments put forward by the Revisionists and Post Revisionists regarding the onset of colonialism, but having assessed these arguments in toto, one is tempted to see elements of both at work in this century.

 The edifice of the early colonial state was based to a great extent on indigenous arrangements of power and institutions. But with gradations of colonial rule, the colonial state engineered some fundamental alterations in the structures of states and the character of the economy. While a good deal of recent research points towards continuity, it must not undermine the fact that there was change, evident in the development of the company state – as Bose and Jalal put it – into a ‘military despot’, in the rise of a gargantuan army and a powerful centralised civilian bureaucracy. The Company State was not any Indian state, and Bayly lucidly elaborates this by pointing out the Company’s sense of its own sovereignty, its strictly executed racial policy, its policy of delegating and not sharing powers, and of maximising revenue collections without intermediaries. At the same time though, the emphasis on continuity is important in the context of the immediate settling in of colonialism where the battle of Plassey is often perceived, and inaccurately so, as an event when colonialism irrupted in Indian history.

Change and continuity are two powerful flows that have always inflected the nature of history. A paradox comes into being when we speak of human life in stasis and juxtapose it with the axiom that nothing is more constant than change itself.

Why can’t change and continuity, two apparent contradictions, conflate to form a larger, more murky truth? Understanding history in terms of strict and exclusive categories of ‘continuity’ and ‘change’ militates with the logic (and beauty) of history and human experience where there has never been any dearth of thriving paradoxes and ironies. In that case would it be difficult to just add one more paradox – of continuity and change in the period and setting of an eventful 18th century India?

Deepak Nair

III History

St. Stephen’s College

 

Tutor: Dr Rohit Wanchoo, St Stephen’s College.

Score: 6.5\10

Bibliography:

 

 

  • Alavi, Seema: (ed) The Eighteenth Century in India.pp.1-56. Delhi, 2002.

 

  • Bayly, C.A: Rulers, townsmen and bazaars: North Indian society in the age of British expansion 1770-1870, Cambridge, 1983.
  • Bayly and Sanjay Subrahmanyam: ‘Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India.’ Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 25, no.4, 1988, pp.401-24.
  • Bose and Jalal: Modern South Asia- History, culture, Political Economy.
  • Chandra, Satish: Parties and Politics at the Mughal court, 1707-1740, Aligarh, 1959.
  • Chaudhury, Sushil: From prosperity to decline: Eighteenth Century Bengal, Delhi, 1995.
  • Habib, Irfan: The Agrarian System of Mughal India. Delhi, 1963.

_________ (Ed): Resistance and Modernisation under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan.

  1. De, Barun: The ideological and social background of Haider Ali and Tipu sultan.
  2. Chetty, Subbaraya: Tipu’s endowments to Hindus and Hindu institutions.
  • Saletore, B.A: Tipu sultan as defender of the Hindu dharma.
  1. Moraes, George: Muslim rulers and their Christian subjects
  • Hasan, Nurul: Zamindars under the Mughals.
  • Marshall, P.J: The Oxford history of British Empire 18th century, (ed).

______________: Bengal: the British Bridgehead, Eastern India 1740-1828,

Cambridge, 1987.

  • Muzaffar, Alam: The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab 1707-1748, Delhi, 1986.
  • Parthasarthi, Prasannan: Rethinking wages and competitiveness in the Eighteenth century: Britain and South India.

________________: ‘Merchants and the Rise of Colonialism’, in Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds) Institutions and Economic change in South Asia, Delhi, 1996 Pp.85-104.

  • Raychaudhuri, Tapan: Cambridge economic history of India.
  • Stein, Burton: State Formation and Economy Reconsidered’, Modern Asian Studies, vol.19. 1985.
  • Stein and Subrahmanyam: Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia. Delhi, 1996
  • Tapan Mohan Chaterjee: The Road to Plassey.1960.