Where is bengal? Situating an Indian region in the early modern world economy

Past and Present

Volumn 213, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 115-146

  Roy, Tirthankar ^a  

^a LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84855210900     PISSN: 00312746     EISSN: 1477464X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtr009     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. 'Bengal offers the most dramatic example of export-stimulated economic growth': John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge, 1995), 202.
2. John R. McLane considers that commercialization in Mughal Bengal had proceeded further than in any other part of the empire, stimulated by 'gigantic inland trade, and foreign export': see his Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal (Cambridge, 2002), 6.
3. Richard M. Eaton explains 'the seventeenth century's booming rice frontier in the east' with reference to 'the eastward movement of Bengal's rivers and hence of the active delta, the region's political and commercial integration with Mughal India, and the growth in the money supply with the influx of outside silver in payment for locally manufactured textiles': see his The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley, 1993), 207.
4. Sushil Chaudhury, From Prosperity to Decline: Eighteenth Century Bengal (New Delhi, 1995), 1, begins with the assertion: 'Bengal's prosperity before the British conquest cannot be in doubt at all'
5. Economic history statements often draw upon general works on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Bengal. A selection should include: W. H. Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar (London, 1920).
6. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir: An Introductory Study in Social History (Delhi, 1969)
7. Rajat Datta, Society, Economy, and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c.1760-1800 (New Delhi, 2000).
8. P. J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead. Eastern India, 1740-1828 (Cambridge, 2006).
9. Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton, 1985)
10. Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770 (Cambridge, 1993)
11. François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668, 2nd edn, revised Vincent A. Smith (London, 1916), 439.
12. On Caesar Frederick's account of trade in lower Bengal, see AGeneral History and Collection of the Voyages and Travels Arranged in Systematic Order, vii, ed. Robert Kerr (Edinburgh and London, 1824), 178-81.
13. Ralph Fitch: England's Pioneer to India and Burma, his Companions and Contemporaries, with his Remarkable Narrative Told in his Own Words, ed. J. H. Ryley (London, 1899), 118.
14. Thomas Bowrey, A Geographical Account of Countries round the Bay of Bengal, 1669 to 1679, ed. Richard Temple (Cambridge, 1905), 212-13.
15. Tavernier dealt in diamonds; some of his principal clients were in Bengal. See also his description of goods exported from the region, in Jean-BaptisteTavernier, Travels in India (1676), ed.V. Ball, 2 vols. (London, 1889), ii, 1-12.
16. India Office Records, London, IOR/H/392, Papers of George Smith, 11
17. Frank Perlin, 'Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia', Past and Present, no. 98 (Feb. 1983), 33, 81, 93.
18. André Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, 1999), 127
19. See also Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000)
20. Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Agriculture, Labour, and the Standard of Living in Eighteenth-Century India', in Robert C. Allen, Tommy Bengtsson and Martin Dribe (eds.), Living Standards in the Past (Oxford, 2005).
21. Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Cotton Textiles in the Indian Subcontinent, 1200-1800', in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (eds.), The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850 (New York and Oxford, 2009), 40-1.
22. Frank, ReOrient, 267, 293
23. Chaudhury, From Prosperity to Decline, 1
24. Perlin, 'Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia', 94
25. SriSri Chaitanya Charitamrita, ed. Jagadishwar Gupta (Calcutta, 1902), 367-71.
26. For the episode of 'the Brahmin, the leader of the robbers', see Sri Chaitanya Bhagabat, ed. Atulkrishna Goswami (Calcutta, 1935), 467-9.
27. See also the episode of Sanatan's escape from prison, with the help of an officer who initially intended to murder him for money, Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, ed. Gupta, 458-9.
28. J. N. Das Gupta, Bengal in the Sixteenth Century AD (Calcutta, 1914), 71-2.
29. In summarizing the relevant passage, I combine three versions of the poem by Chandrabati (c.1545-80), available in Purbbabanga Geetika [Eastern Bengal Ballads], ed. Dinesh Chandra Sen, 4 vols. (Calcutta, 1923-32), i, 202-3.
30. Prachin Purbbabanga Geetika [Old Eastern Bengal Ballads], ed. Kshitishchandra Moulik, 7 vols. (Calcutta, 1970-5), i, 262.
31. Dinesh Chandra Sen, The Bengali Ramayanas (Calcutta, 1920), 190
32. Sukumar Sen, Bangala Sahityer Itihas [History of Bengali Literature], 4 vols. (Calcutta, 1959-63), i, 512.
33. Daulat Kazir Lorchandrani o Satimayna [Lorchandrani and Satimayna of Daulat Kazi], ed. Debnath Bandopadhyay (Calcutta, 1995), 15.
34. The term'ballad' has been used to refer to Bengali poetic narratives, for example by W. Sutton Page, 'Bengali Ballads', Bull. School of Oriental and African Studies, iv (1926). For a fuller description of these works and the appropriateness of the term, see below.
35. For standard compilations, see Purbbabanga Geetika, ed. Sen; Prachin Purbbabanga Geetika, ed. Moulik. A smaller third cluster is Mafizul Islam, Rangpurer Palagan [Ballads of Rangpur] (Dacca, 1985).
36. The main output of the project was published as Punthi Parichaya [Introduction to Manuscripts], ed. Panchanan Mandal et al., 6 vols. (Calcutta, 1951-89).
37. David L. Curley, 'Kings andCommerceon an Agrarian Frontier: Kalketu's Story in Mukunda's Candimangal', Indian Econ. and Soc. Hist. Rev., xxxviii (2001).
38. See, for example, J. C. Holt, 'The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood', Past and Present, no. 18 (Nov. 1960).
39. Vladimir Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, ed. Anatoly Liberman, trans. Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin (Minneapolis, 1997).
40. See esp. editor's intro. A frequent criticism of the formalist agenda is that it underestimates the individuality of the products and their makers.
41. Clinton B. Seely, Barisal and Beyond: Essays on Bangla Literature (New Delhi, 2008).
42. Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar, 120
43. H. T. Colebrooke, Remarks on the Husbandry and Internal Commerce of Bengal (Calcutta, 1804), 114.
44. Sugata Bose, for example, distinguishes four ecological zones within colonial Bengal, the submontane north, the western plateau, and two river deltas, the one in the east being active and the one in the west in decline: see his Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital, 9-14. The seaboard plays a marginal role in this division. In the early modern period, the north was a less important region in economic terms, and the seaboard more prominent.
45. R. D. Oldham, 'The Evolution of Indian Geography', Geog. Jl, iii (1894).
46. For Bengal, the threefold division was applied by Cotton Hand-Book for Bengal: Being a Digest of All Information Available from Official Records and Other Sources on the Subject of the Production of Cotton in the Bengal Provinces, comp. J. G. Medlicott (Calcutta, 1862), 29.
47. W.W. Hunter, Famine Aspects of Bengal Districts (London, 1874), 17, 36, 64, 94, 100, 105.
48. Change in rice yield requires variable application of biological input. All evidence on the matter suggests that the intensity of biological inputs in Bengal agriculture had been low and invariable at least from the mid eighteenth century. For a discussion of trends in rice yields in Bengal, see Tirthankar Roy, 'Economic Conditions in Early Modern Bengal:AContribution to the Divergence Debate', Jl Econ. Hist., lxx (2010).
49. A description of this world before the Mughals can be found in Haraprasad Shastri, 'Notes on the Banks of the Hughly in 1495', Proc. Asiatic Soc. Bengal (Calcutta, 1892).
50. OmPrakash, 'Bullion for Goods: International Trade and the Economy of Early Eighteenth Century Bengal', Indian Econ. and Soc. Hist. Rev., xiii (1976), esp. 172-3.
51. On prices, see Najaf Haider, 'Prices and Wages in India (1200-1800): Source Material, Historiography and New Directions', paper given at the conference 'Towards a Global History of Prices and Wages', Univ. of Utrecht, 19-21 Aug. 2004, preliminary draft available online at .
52. India Office Records, London, IOR/H/392, Papers of George Smith, 31
53. James Taylor, A Sketch of the Topography and Statistics of Dacca (Calcutta, 1840), 120
54. Comments by William Cowper (revenue officer), in Select Committee, and Committee of Whole House of Commons, on Affairs of East India Company Minutes of Evidence (Trade and Shipping, and Renewal of Charter), House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, , 1812-13(122), 22.
55. For a discussion, see Geoffrey Gilbert, 'Adam Smith on the Nature and Causes of Poverty', Rev. Social Econ., lv (1997).
56. For example, Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies: Being the Observations and Remarks of Capt. Alexander Hamilton, who Resided in those Parts from the Year 1688, to 1723, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (London, 1739), ii, 24-7.
57. Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir
58. H. J. Rainey, 'What Was the Sundarban Originally, and When, and Wherefore Did It Assume its Existing State of Utter Desolation?', Proc. Asiatic Soc. Bengal (Calcutta, 1867).
59. Baharistan-i-Ghaybi:AHistory of the MughalWars in Assam, Cooch Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the Reigns of Jahangir and Shahjahan, trans.M. I. Borah, 2 vols. (Gauhati, 1936), ii, passim.
60. Ralph Fitch, ed. Ryley, 119.
61. Hamilton, New Account of the East Indies, ii, 25
62. These towns were located on the northern bank of the confluence of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, within 5-20 miles of Dacca
63. Ralph Fitch, ed. Ryley, 118-19.
64. Hamilton, New Account of the East Indies, ii, 26
65. The following description of the partnership between the Arakan kingdom and the Portuguese relies on F. C. Danvers, The Portuguese in India: Being a History of the Rise and Decline of their Eastern Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1894), ii, 170-81.
66. H. Beveridge, The District of Bakarganj, its History and Statistics (London, 1876), 34-40.
67. J. C. Jack, Bakarganj (Bengal District Gazetteers, xxxvi, Calcutta, 1918), 18-20.
68. On the rise to prominence of the Arakan state in the seventeenth century, and its significance for the historiography of European influence upon the south-east Asian polity, see Michael W. Charney, 'Crisis and Reformation in a Maritime Kingdom of Southeast Asia: Forces of Instability and Political Disintegration in Western Burma (Arakan), 1603-1701', Jl Econ. and Social Hist. of the Orient, xli (1998).
69. On the geopolitics of the seventeenth-century Bay of Bengal, see Cayetano J. Socarrás, 'The Portuguese in Lower Burma: Filipe de Brito de Nicote', Luso-Brazilian Rev., iii (1966).
70. See also Rila Mukherjee, 'Mobility in the Bay of Bengal World: Medieval Raiders, Traders, States and the Slaves', Indian Hist. Rev., xxxvi (2009).
71. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal, 1500-1700 (Delhi, 1990)
72. Baharistan-i-Ghaybi, trans. Borah.
73. The Journals of Major James Rennell, First-Surveyor-General of India: Written for the Information of the Governors of Bengal during his Surveys of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, 1764 to 1767, ed.T. H.D. LaTouche (Calcutta, 1910), 39.
74. On the post-history of the Portuguese in the Dacca region, see B. C. Allen, Dacca (Eastern Bengal and Assam District Gazetteers, v, Allahabad, 1912).
75. Historical documentation on slavery in Bengal is thin. Some material was collected on practices prevalent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when abolition was already the deliberate policy in the British territories. See William Adam, The Law and Custom of Slavery in British India, in a Series of Letters to Thomas Fowell Buxton (Boston, 1840), letterV.
76. Captain Fisher, 'Memoir of Sylhet, Kachar and the Adjoining Districts', Jl Roy. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, ix (1840).
77. Also useful, though in the main concerned with Malabar and Canara, is East India: Copies of the Special Reports of the Indian Law Commissioners: (C.) No. I. Papers Connected with Law Commissioners' Reports on Slavery in India and (C.) No. II. On the Examinations of Absent Witnesses, Parliamentary Papers, 1842 (585), 470-532. Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar, 91-3, describes the institution based mainly on Persian and Goan sources.
78. Journals of Major James Rennell, ed. La Touche, 136.
79. Hamilton, New Account of the East Indies, ii, 26-7. Francis Buchanan visited Chittagong in the late eighteenth century.
80. For his account of what was still a Portuguese town, see Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798), ed. Willem van Schendel (New Delhi, 1992), 123.
81. For 'The Battle of the Chaudhuris', see Purbbabanga Geetika, ed. Sen, iii, 1031-138.
82. Purbbabanga Geetika, ed. Sen, i, 233-6.
83. Mancur Olson used the parable of a roving bandit who found it more sensible to become a sedentary tax collector to illustrate the origin of the government: see his Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships (New York, 2000)
84. The kingdoms on the fringes of the Chota Nagpur plateau produced family histories. These carried little information on the people themselves. The folk songs of the region compiled from the late twentieth century are more informative, but not on the pre-colonial past.
85. Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, ed. Gupta, 385.
86. Jagdish Chandra Jha, The Kol Insurrection of Chota-Nagpur (Calcutta, 1964), 22
87. On the Kols and their region of ancestry, see E. T. Dalton, 'The "Kols" of Chota-Nagpore', Trans. Ethnological Soc. London, vi (1868).
88. Lieutenant Tickell, 'Memoir on the Hodésum (improperly called Kolehan)', Jl Asiatic Soc. Bengal, ix (1840), 804.
89. Augustus Prinsep, 'On the Traces of Feudalism in India, and the Condition of Lands Now in a Comparative State of Agricultural Infancy', Jl Roy. Asiatic Soc. Great Britain and Ireland, viii (1846).
90. Francis Buchanan travelled in Chota Nagpur in the late eighteenth century and reported on the origins of the local states. See 'Journal of Francis Buchanan (Patna and Gaya Districts)', ed. V. H. Jackson, Jl Bihar and Orissa Research Soc., viii (1922).
91. On the Mughal military campaign in Jharkhand and its consequences, see Muzaffar Alam, 'Eastern India in the Early Eighteenth Century "Crisis": Some Evidence from Bihar', Indian Econ. and Soc. Hist. Rev., xxviii (1991).
92. Tavernier, Travels in India, ed. Ball, ii, 65. Nothing very much was heard of diamonds in this area after Tavernier. Presumably the mines had already been nearly exhausted when he arrived here.
93. N. K. Basu, Hindu Samajer Garan [The Structure of Hindu Society] (Calcutta, 1949), 24-5.
94. J. Hoffmann, 'Principles of Succession and Inheritance among the Mundas', Jl Bihar and Orissa Research Soc., i (1915), 6: 'the proprietary right rises in the first instance naturally out of creative or formative work. Hence the man who first turns a piece of jungle or a plot of wasteland into arable land, becomes ipso facto theowner of that land even as he who shapes a piece of wood into an axe-handle or a plough, becomes the owner of that handle or plough'. Hoffmann's testimony was influential in the legal recognition of collective property in the uplands.
95. See also Sarat Chandra Roy, The Mundas and their Country (1912; Ranchi, 2004)
96. Discussion in P. P. Mohapatra, 'Class Conflict and Agrarian Regimes in Chotanagpur, 1860-1950', Indian Econ. and Soc. Hist. Rev., xxviii (1991).
97. Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, Peasant History of Late Pre-Colonial and Colonial India (New Delhi, 2008), 716-19
98. Sangeeta Dasgupta, 'The Journey of an Anthropologist in Chhotanagpur', Indian Econ. and Soc. Hist. Rev., xli (2004).
99. K. Sivaramakrishnan, 'British Imperium and Forested Zones of Anomaly in Bengal, 1767-1833', Indian Econ. and Soc. Hist. Rev., xxxiii (1996).
100. S. T. Cuthbert, 'Extracts from a Report on Chota Nagpore', Jl Roy. Asiatic Soc. Great Britain and Ireland, viii (1846).
101. For example Jha, Kol Insurrection of Chota-Nagpur. The literature on the Santals is large, partly because the Subaltern Studies Group used this example to illustrate arguments about subaltern identity.
102. For economic history of the rebellion, see Elizabeth Rottger-Hogan, 'Insurrection... or Ostracism: A Study of the Santal Rebellion of 1855', Contributions to Indian Sociology, xvi (1982).
103. Chaudhuri, Peasant History. For a subaltern analysis of the rebellion, see Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983).
104. A rare Bengali eyewitness account of the 1855 rebellion can be found in the eastern Bengal ballads
105. For a representative statement of the argument, see Nandini Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854-2006, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 2007)
106. F. B. Bradley-Birt, Chota Nagpore:ALittle-Known Province of the Empire, 2nd edn (London, 1910), 175.
107. Tirthankar Roy, 'Sardars, Jobbers, Kanganies: The Labour Contractor and Indian Economic History', Mod. Asian Studies, xlii (2007).
108. Bradley-Birt, Chota Nagpore, 171
109. 'Sheeladebi', in Purbbabanga Geetika, ed. Sen, iv, 1253-70.