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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VII. The outlying regions

Collection:: Economics Books

THE OUTLYING REGIONS 187 In the course of the next half century, most of this region fell into the hands of the Marathas, whose agrarian policy is outside the scope of the present essay; but the South- eastern portion came under the rule of Asaf Jah, the founder of the modern State of Hyderabad, and, as will be ex- plained in the next section, this fact is of historical im- portance for the beginnings of the British administration in Bengal. {t remains to mention the position in the States of Gol- conda and Bijapur, which, though paying tribute, were still outside the Mogul Empire at the time of Murshid Quli’s reorganisation. I have found no contemporary account of the position in Golconda during the sixteenth century, but early in the seventeenth the country was wholly under the farming-system in its worst form, the amount payable being settled annually by auction! and the system was clearly of old standing at the time when the descriptions we possess were written. We have seen in an earlier chapter that farming was practised in this region in the fourteenth century, and we find it in full swing in the seventeenth; if there were any changes in the interval, they are not recorded in any of the authorities which have come to my notice; and the inference that farming continued throughout seems to me to be probable, but is not estab- ished by direct evidence. Under the annual auction-farm, the pressure on the peasants was necessarily at its maximum; as Methwold wrote, the King’s subjects were ““all his tenants, and at a rack tent’; and the only limit on exaction was the risk of driving the peasants to rebel or abscond. The share of the produce which they were expected to pay is not on record, but it can scarcely have been a factor of much practical importance when the farmer was concerned only to realise the greatest possible sum, and had no reason to think of the future. I have not found contemporary records of the ! Methwold, Relations of the Kingdom of Goilckonda, in Purchas His Pilgrimage, 4th edition. Description of the Domains of King Kotebipa . . . in the Dutch collection of voyages known as Begin ende Voortgangh van de . . . O. I. Compagnie (ii. 77 f1.). The evidence regarding Golconda and Bijapur is discussed at greater length in From Akbar to Aurangzeb. Ch. VIII, sec. 3.

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