The agrarian system of Moslem India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1804119261

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-188010

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Moreland, William Harrison http://d-nb.info/gnd/172263670

Title:: The agrarian system of Moslem India

Edition:: 2. ed. Reissue (d. Ausg. Cambridge) 1929; [Reprint]

Place of publication:: Delhi

Publisher:: Oriental Books, Munshiram Manoharlal

Year of publication:: 1968

Scope:: XVII, 296 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VC. The seventeenth century

Collection:: Economics Books

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 147 very strongly on his mind, and it is noteworthy that he does not attribute any part of it to exceptional mortality. Had plague been raging throughout the country, he, as a prac- tising physician, could scarcely have ignored the fact; but he is quite definite in attributing the evil, not to any such cause, but to the severity of the administration, which drove the peasants to abscond. Much of the Empire, he observed, was “badly cultivated, and thinly peopled; and even a considerable portion of the good land remains untilled from want of labourers?; many of whom perish in consequence of the bad treatment they experience from the Governor. These poor people, when incapable of discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, are not only often deprived of the means of subsistence, but are bereft of their children, who are carried away as slaves. Thus it happens that many of the peasantry, driven to despair by so execrable a tyranny, abandon the country, and seek a more tolerable mode of existence, either in the towns, or camps; as bearers of burdens, carriers of water, or servants to horsemen. Sometimes they fly to the territories of a Raja, because there they find less oppression, and are allowed a greater degree of comfort.” According to Bernier, then, the peasants were being driven by administrative pressure into other occupations, or, into regions where the Mogul administration did not operate; and his account, which is in itself credible, fits in precisely with the situation depicted in Aurangzeb’s orders, a peasantry heavily assessed and kept under strict discipline, but decreasing in numbers to an extent which was seriously embarrassing the administration.. The increase in adminis- trative pressure which had occurred during the first half of the century must be attributed either to Jahangir, or to Shahjahan, or to both Emperors. According to the tra- ditional account summarised in an earlier section, we must look to the reign of Shahjahan for most, if not all, of the increase, since the revenue from the Reserved areas rose in that period from 150 to nearly 400 lakhs; but more definite evidence is wanted for a final verdict.2 All that can be { The quotation is from the published translation; '‘ peasants’ would be a more precise rendering than ‘labourers’ of the word laboureurs. *In From Akbar to Aurangzeb, Ch. VIII, sec. 5, I argued that the in- creased pressure during Shihjahin’s reign was reflected in certain revenue statistics which have survived. I have since found that the argument is

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