The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720–1800

by Prasannan Parthasarathi

• ISBN13: 9780521570428
• ISBN10: 0521570425
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

According to widespread belief, poverty and low standards of living have been characteristic of India for centuries. Challenging this view, Prasannan Parthasarathi demonstrates that, until the late eighteenth century, labouring groups in South India, those at the bottom of the social order, were in a powerful position, receiving incomes well above subsistence. The decline in their economic fortunes, the author asserts, was a process initiated towards the end of that century, with the rise of colonial rule. Building on revisionist interpretations, he examines the transformation of Indian society and its economy under British rule through the prism of the labouring classes, arguing that their treatment by the early colonial state had no precedent in the pre-colonial past and that poverty and low wages were a product of colonial rule. The book promises to make an important contribution to the economic history of the region, and to the study of colonialism.

Table of Contents

List of tables	viii
Acknowledgments	ix
Note on Indian words and place names	x
Note on money	xi
List of abbreviations	xii
Introduction	1	(8)
Weavers and merchants 1720--1760	9	(34)
Agriculture and cotton textiles	43	(35)
The cotton cultivation process	62	(5)
The cotton trade in South India	67	(5)
On the sources for table 2.1	72	(1)
Notes on the cloth trade	73	(5)
Weaver distress 1765--1800	78	(23)
Weaver protest	101	(20)
Laborers, kings and colonialism	121	(28)
Glossary	149	(4)
Bibliography	153	(8)
Index	161