Social Scientist The Core and the Periphery: A Contribution to the Debate on the Eighteenth Century Author(s): Z. U. Malik Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 18, No. 11/12 (Nov. - Dec., 1990), pp. 3-35 Published by: Social Scientist Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3517149 Accessed: 03-04-2020 15:29 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Social Scientist is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Scientist This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Fri, 03 Apr 2020 15:29:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Z.U. MALIK* The Core and the Periphery: A Contribution to the Debate on the Eighteenth Century** There is a general unanimity among modern historians on seeing the dissolution of Mughal empire as a notable phenomenon cf the eighteenth century. The discord of views relates to the classification and explanation of historical processes behind it, and also to the interpretation and articulation of its impact on political and socio- economic conditions of the country. Most historians sought to explain the imperial crisis from the angle of medieval society in general, relating it to the character and quality of people, and the roles of the diverse classes. They have laid emphasis on the inquiry into deeper causes of the decreasing social surplus for distribution amongst the governing classes leading to ethnic and regional frictions among them. They have further stressed the need to explore the historical factors responsible for a steady deterioration in the economic condition of actual producers, the changing patterns of relationship between zamindars and political authorities, and failure of government in maintaining direct contacts with small landowners and resident (khud- kasht) cultivators. The researches made in this direction though reflecting divergent formulations have in effect rendered obsolete the perspective of historiography of Medieval India from the conventional paradigms of chronological narrative of events moving in recurrent cycles around royalty, nobility, wars and revolts, and called for a thorough investigation and objective analysis of all possible dimensions of the socio-economic forces. A good many comprehensive monographical studies as well as miscellaneous publications in the form of articles and seminar papers have appeared on socio-economic themes of Indian history during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much work in this field, I am happy to say, has been done at the Department of History at Aligarh. Latterly, scholarly attention has been attracted towards a portra- * Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh ** Presidential Address, Medieval India Section, Indian I{istory Congress, Calcutta, 1990. Social Scientist, Vol. 18, Nos. 11-12, November-December 1990 This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Fri, 03 Apr 2020 15:29:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST yal of eighteenth-century in its own distinctive image independently of the phenomenon of Mughal decline, and to see it as a consequ-ence of a continuing process of economic growth in seventeenth century. According to this thesis the disintegration of Mughal empire did not produce destabilising effects on the country's trade and commerce, its markets, towns and monetary system; but on the contrary generated forces of regeneration and growth throughout India. Through distribution of urban economies and collaboration of Indian merchants, bankers and traders with the East India Company the agricultural and industrial production was further stimulated. The continuity in the economic development was thus maintained without being interrupted by the establishment of British imperial power in the latter half of the eighteenth century.1 Frank Perlin, in his laboriously researched monograph,2 has viewed the problem of India's pre-colonial past in the context of international commercial capitalism of which, he claims, it had become an essential part even during the seventeenth century. Local merchant capitalism emerged independently in India as in Europe but 'within a common international theatre, and societal and commercial changes'.3 He hastens to add: 'But by the eighteenth century the process of integration is of an altogether different scale and character'.4 Another author has tried to discover elements of elements of continuity between seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the system of polity and governance. He states that under the Mughals no state had come into being or grown to the full stature of nation state so as to decay or wither away later. The Mughal state should not be seen as a consolidated territorial entity with geographically fixed boundaries, comprising within its limits a homogeneous community of people. One should not be overawed by anarchic conditions prevailing in eighteenth-century because such a state had always existed in the preceding one in which Mughal state expanded and thrived.5 J.P. Marshall has attempted to identify features of change and continuity in most aspects of agrarian systems existing in the pre-colonial and post-British periods of eighteenth century Bengal. He concludes: Thus there was an apparent continuity between the old Mughal regime and the new British one.6 But in this vision of eighteenth-century the centre is blank. No study has focussed on the position occupied by the actual tillers of the soil and producers of artisnal goods as crucial elements of the internal economic structure and activity. The questions how the agricultural and professional classes were materially benefited, and in what manner their living conditions were improved by the continuing productivity have not been dealt with on the basis of statistical data to complete the picture of general economic prosperity. Irfan Habib remarks that 'the primary method of surplus-extraction throughout India had come to be the levy of land revenue on behalf of or, in the name of, the This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Fri, 03 Apr 2020 15:29:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE CORE AND THE PERIPHERY 5 Sovereign Ruler.'7 After the colonial conquest of Bengal, he adds 'the source of the conquerors' profits, however, lay not in commerce, but in land revenue. Maximization of land revenue was necessary for the maximization of profits.'8 Marshall also admits that 'taxation was the central preoccupation of early British rule,9 but its magnitude, modes of assessment and collection and incidence are the chief characteristics that so sharply contrast with the nature of revenue management of former regime in Bengal. From a careful examination of contemporary source-material three major points of difference emerge on comparative basis which were not taken into consideration by Marshal: (1) Under the Nizamat (1717-1756) the holdings of defaulting zamindars were not put to auction for sale; these were brought under the direct control of government and afterwards restored to them on the pledge of regular payment of dues, (2) no Mughal governor of Bengal had introduced the system of revenue-farming on the scale indulged in by the East India Company; and (3) in judicial matters the principle of arbitration was preferred to resolve agrarian and fiscal disputes over endless and complicated litigation in courts of law. Moreover, the magnitude of revenue demand which had reached the highest pitch, from Rs. 64.51 lakhs in 1762-3 under the Nizamat, to Rs. 147.0 lakhs in 1765-6 (an increase of 20 per cent according to the estimate of Marshall) proved disastrous for the countryside. Large tracts of lands became desolate and the peasantry reduced to poverty, abandoned cultivation and deserted their villages. According to Tabatabai the artisans and other professional classes experienced great hardship due to dearth of work. 'They were fleeing from place td place in search of employment, many of them were starving and reduced to beggary'.10 Tribute or Drain of Wealth that followed the famous Plunder of Plassey, of which over- taxation was a necessary facet, impoverished the country and retarted socio-economic progress during the latter part of eighteenth-century'.11 No historian of eighteenth-century seems to have asserted that the colonial power itself had created a political and military vacuum,12 but it is a historical fact that it took advantage of the absence of a strong, centralized authority to step into it. Had the imperial power remained as predominant, politically and militarily, at the mid- eighteenth century as it had been in the previous century such a situation would not easily have arisen. It is also not correct that political decentralization went hand in hand in the distribution of power at the local level.13 There is no historical evidence to determine the character and phases of this process which helped the formation of independent states in Hyderabad (1725) and Bengal (1740). These states sprang up in manifest consequence of the growing weakness of imperial government, which could not assert its writ in the face of military strenlgth of their founders. The process was later accelerated by the diplomatic and military intervention of European powers. At the time of the rise of Maratha state under Chhatrapati Raja Shahu This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Fri, 03 Apr 2020 15:29:21 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST in 1708 no increase in the density of economic life was really visible,14 it was constantly faced with financial difficulties that could be overcome only after its gradual expansion in the next two decades.