Deutsche Geschichte: Neueste Zeit

The agrarian system of Moslem India

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Multivolume work

Identifikator:: 1892063557

Document type:: Multivolume work

Author:: Lamprecht, Karl http://d-nb.info/gnd/118569015

Title:: Deutsche Geschichte

Place of publication:: Berlin

Publisher:: Gaertner

Year of publication:: 1891-

Collection:: Economics Books

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Volume

Identifikator:: 1892072254

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-237894

Document type:: Volume

Author:: Lamprecht, Karl http://d-nb.info/gnd/118569015

Title:: Neueste Zeit

Volume count:: Abt. 3

Place of publication:: Berlin

Publisher:: Weidmann

Year of publication:: 1907

Scope:: XII, 539 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Fünftes Kapitel. Fortschritte des politischen Denkens

Collection:: Economics Books

116 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA helpful or intolerably vexatious; and evidence is wanting to show which alternative is nearer the truth. We may safely guess that neither was universally true, that there were good collectors as well as bad, and that the balance was determined, in the last resort, by the personal qualifica- tions of the Emperor. We can believe then, if we choose, that the system worked reasonably well in the Reserved districts under Akbar’s rule, and yet went to pieces under Jahangir; but we know only that it had disappeared before the accession of Aurangzeb. Peasants in Reserved districts were, however, but a small proportion of the whole; and the ordinary man had to look to the assignee to whom circumstances entirely beyond his control might entrust his destinies. The literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries does not of itself enable us to form a definite judgment regarding the conduct of the assignees. All that can be said is that frequent changes in Assignments undoubtedly made for inefficient and oppressive management, because they rendered any- thing like a constructive policy a waste of effort. A col- lector might work up his district, and be rewarded for doing so; an assignee might lose his holding before his efforts began to bear fruit, and in all ordinary cases would have been very unwise to sink capital on such precarious security. There is not sufficient evidence to justify a precise state- ment as to the length of Assignment-tenure in this reign. I have found no record of any formal rule on the subject, and, while the chronicles disclose instances of large areas changing hands at short intervals, the instances are too few to form the basis of a confident generalisation. Probably there were more cases than we hear of where an assignee retained his holding long enough for a constructive policy to be carried out; but the facts on record show, at any rate, that the duration of the tenure was absolutely uncertain, and, if an assignee had no assurance of retaining his holding, then we cannot suppose that an ordinary man would take a long view, or do much beyond collecting the largest possible Income. In general, then, there was probably better hope of development in a Reserved district in charge of a com- petent collector. It must. however, be recalled that the

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