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 VIII. Conclusion

Collection:: Economics Books

CONCLUSION 20% to escape from the domination of theories and terminologies, and to get down to the facts. Finally, a few words may be said regarding the economic significance of the facts which have been brought together. The idea of agricultural development, progressing slowly but continuously, was already present in the fourteenth century, and probably was never entirely lost; but the political and social environment was usually unfavourable to its fruition. The high pitch of the revenue Demand, approximating to the full economic rent, could be justified from Islamic texts by anyone who might care to take the trouble, but its actual motive was to be found in the needs of successive adminis- trations and their officers; and its influence was necessarily increased by the miscellaneous exactions, prohibited from time to time, but recurring regularly after each prohibition. The direct result was to take from the peasant whatever he could be made to pay, and thus to stereotype a low standard of living; but in addition there was the further effect of requiring the peasant who was making money to conceal his good fortune from everyone outside the village, and perhaps even from his neighbours. Thus the normal position was a contest between the administration and the peasants, the former endeavouring to discover and appropriate what the latter endeavoured to retain and conceal—an environ- ment in which agricultural development could not be °xpected to make much headway. If the land had been fully occupied, such a position could not have continued for long, because competition among peasants would have resulted in an increase of their payments to a point where either life ceased to be worth living, or the administration was forced to change its attitude, as in fact was to happen in the nineteenth century over the Sreater part of India. Throughout the Moslem period, however, there was ‘usually land to spare, and the risk of losing peasants set some limit to administrative exactions. [t is, I think, probable that the risk frequently became a reality in one part of the country or other, and that local depopulation occurred from time to time, though not on a scale to attract the chroniclers’ attention + but two instances

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