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Town Building in North India, 1790–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

C. A. Bayly
C. A. Bayly
Affiliation:
Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge
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Extract

The fate of urban centres in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century India has attracted attention far in excess of their supposed importance as population centres. It is assumed that flourishing towns are an indicator of economic development and change in their hinterlands. Muslim historians traditionally laid stress on the opulence of towns as a gauge of the wealth of divisions of the Moghul Empire. Recently, Indian historians of the Medieval period have returned to the theme, claiming for the Moghul cities large populations, developed ‘industries’ and sophisticated credit systems. Throughout these works there is an implicit paralled drawn with the point it is suggested that far from being mere administrative centers and entrepots for ‘aristocratic’ long-distance trade, these cities were exchange marts for wealthy hinterlands where agreculturalists exchanged thier products of ‘urban industries’. It is but a short step to argue that these cities weakened by the anarchy of the eighteenth century, were finally ruined by the negligent commercial amorality of the East India Company. The claim by early British writers that the security of British rule encouraged the growth of urban communities in which merchants secured relief from the vexations of local potentates and innumerable minor transit duties is rejected This argument for town decline first revived by Professor Irfan Habib almost as a throwaway, has recently been followed by other younger Indian Marxist historians.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , July 1975 , pp. 483 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

The research on which this paper is based was generously funded by the United Kingdom Social Science Research Council. The paper was originally presented at the Director's study group on ‘India: Society in War, 1795–1808’, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in 1974.Google Scholar

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