¹ See Morris, M. D. et al. , Indian Economy in the 19th Century: A Symposium (New Delhi, 1969)Google Scholar; and Morris, M. D., ‘Economic Change and Agriculture in 19th Century India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review [IESHR], 3 (06 1966), 185–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The most recent foray into the ‘Nationalist-Immiserationist’ (Neo-Marxist) and ‘Imperialist-Meliorist’ debate has been by Peter Robb proposing an empirical, non-ideological ‘middle way’ — Robb, P., ‘British Rule and Indian “Improvement”’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, XXXIV, 4 (11 1981), 507–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Kumar, D., Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which first raised serious doubts concerning de-peasantization and the creation of a novel pool of landless labourers.

³ For South India, Baker, C. J., An Indian Rural Economy, 1880–1955—The Tamilnad Countryside (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar. For Bengal, Chaudhuri, B. B., Growth of Commercial Agriculture in Bengal: 1757–1900 (Calcutta, 1964)Google Scholar and subsequent articles, and Islam, M. M., Bengal Agriculture 1920–46: A Quantitative Study (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar. For North India, Whitcombe, E., Agrarian Conditions in Northern India (Berkeley, 1971)Google Scholar, and Stone, I., Canal Irrigation in British India (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar. Western India, the locus for Gandhi's 1918 Kaira satyagraha, has been a particularly popular area for study, with McAlpin, M. B., Subject to Famine (Princeton, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Charlesworth, N., Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Bombay Presidency, 1850–1935 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar important recent monographs. In addition there are a large number of recent unpublished British and American theses which touch on aspects of late 19th century economic change in the various provinces—Western India (S. Prakash, S. C. Guha), Bengal (S. Bose), Central Provinces (C. Bates), United Provinces (P. J. Musgrave, S. Commander), Bihar (C. Fisher), Punjab (S. Mishra). This ignores the even greater number of recent Indian theses. Only the ‘Native States’ of Rajputana have been seriously neglected.

⁴ Digby, W., Prosperous British India (London, 1901)Google Scholar, Dutt, R. C., The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age (London, 1906)Google Scholar, Bhatia, B. M., Famines in India (Bombay, 1967)Google Scholar, Whitcombe, , ‘Agrarian Conditions’Google Scholar. It was the findings of D. Kumar and the work of Cohn, B. S. and Frykenberg, R. (Gunthur District 1788–1848. Oxford, 1965, and Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History. Madison, 1969)Google Scholar on institutional structures, and of Thorner, D. (Land and Labour in India. New York, 1962)Google Scholar on ‘de-industrialization’ which first led to a questioning of the degree of economic transformation which occurred during the 19th century. Then the crop production and national income studies of Blyn, G. (Agricultural Trends in India, 1891–1947. Philadelphia, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mukherjee, M. (National Income of India: Trends and Structure. Calcutta, 1969)Google Scholar suggested amelioration between 1860 and 1920, which encouraged more detailed research by subsequent economic historians.

⁵ Mukherjee, , National Income, p. 61.Google Scholar

⁶ Mody, A., ‘Population Growth and the Commercialisation of Agriculture in India, 1890–1940’ (IESHR, 1982, XIX, 236–66)Google Scholar suggests that the period 1900–20 may also have been a ‘high noon’ period in many respects also for the internal grain trade and cropping specialization.

⁷ McAlpin, , Subject to Famine, pp. 112–29 and 198–202Google Scholar; and Commander, S. J., ‘The Agrarian Economy of North India, 1800–80. Some Aspects of Growth and Stagnation in the Doab’ (PhD Cambridge, 1980), pp. 172–8Google Scholar, clearly demonstrate such an easing in jumma levels.

⁸ For the growth of a broad ‘world economy’ between 1860 and 1914 see Lewis, W. A., Growth and Fluctuations, 1870–1913 (London, 1978)Google Scholar. For the expansion of Indian overseas commerce–which, on a deflated index, showed exports increasing by 162% and imports by 156% in value terms between 1870–79 and 1900–09—see Adams, J., ‘Economic Change, Exports and Imports—The Case of India 1870–1960’ (PhD Texas University, 1966).Google Scholar

⁹ See Whitcombe, E., ‘Irrigation’, pp. 677–737 in Desai, M. and Kumar, D. (eds), Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol 2, 1750–1970 [CEHI] (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar, for the all-India development of the canal network; Prabha, C., ‘District-Wise Rates of Growth of Agricultural Output–East and West Punjab’, IESHR, 6, 4 (12 1969), 333–50Google Scholar; and Stone, , Canal IrrigationGoogle Scholar, for the impact of canals in the Punjab and United Provinces (UP).

¹⁰ For example, see the comments of Moreland, W. H. in the UP Season and Crop Report 1910/11 p. 4.Google Scholar

¹¹ All-India railway mileage and capital investment figures are drawn from C. B. Dudley and Morris, M. D., ‘Selected Railway Statistics for the Indian Subcontinent: 1853–1946/7’, Artha Vijnana 17 (09 1975), 187–298CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the UP track mileage has been calculated from the Government of India Publication, History of Indian Railways Constructed and in Progress (Simla, 1923)Google Scholar; and African and Chinese network totals from the Railway Yearbook (1916), pp. 48–9.Google Scholar

¹² The Permanent and Temporary Settlement (Colvin, A., Allahabad, 1873)Google Scholar enquiry's district reports clearly bring out the expansionary nature of this period. The 1847 Select Committee Report on Sugar and Coffee Planting in the East and West Indies and Mauritius (Parliamentary Papers—PP—1847–8 XXIII)Google Scholar; and the 1855 North-Western Provinces Government's [NWP] Report on a Project for a Railway in Rohilcund (Selections from Records of Government, NWP, New Series, Misc. No. 12) outline the expansion in the internal sugar and salt trade. Evidence on the switch from pack bullocks to carts is available in Andrew, W. P., Indian Railways and their Probable Results (London, 1848).Google Scholar For the introduction and spread of Ganges steamboats, see Bernstein, H. T., Steamboats on the Ganges (Bombay, 1960)Google Scholar, and Brame, A., The India General Steam Navigation Company (London, 1900).Google Scholar

¹³ This table bases its 1840s and 1850s freight rate returns on, for riverboats, Bourne, J., India Steam Navigation Report (London, 1849)Google Scholar; for steamers, Bernstein, , Steamboats on the Ganges;Google Scholar, for pack animals, Andrew, , Indian Railways;, for carts, ‘1855 Railway in Rohilcund’Google Scholar. These returns are substantiated by contemporary journals and public works proceedings. 1870s riverboat and steamboat returns are derived from, Supplement to the Gazette of India, 20 07 1872Google Scholar; cart rates from the 1879 Famine Commission, E.C. Buck Evidence [Ev.] p. 466Google Scholar; 1900s railway freight rates are drawn from Dudley and Morris, ‘Selected Railway Statistics’. (It should be noted that such cart freights apply to metalled roads. Freight rates ruled at more than twice this level on earthen (kuccha) roads).

¹⁴ See Varady, R. G., ‘North Indian Banjaras: Their Evolution as Transporters’, South Asia (03–09 1979), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ For the relative efficiency of carts vis-à-vis pack bullocks—with the savings in daily loading and unloading, wastage and fodder—and the 1840s ‘bullock cart revolution’ see, Guha, A., ‘Raw Cotton of Western India: Output, Transport and Marketing, 1750–1850’, IESHR, 9, 1 (03 1972), 1–42.Google Scholar

¹⁶ These corresponded to the ‘great firms’ delineated by Timberg, T., The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists (New Delhi, 1978), ch. 5Google Scholar. Hoey, W. A., A Monograph on the Trade and Manufacturers in Northern India (Lucknow, 1880), part 2 gives the most detailed description of 19th century indigenous commerce.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Derbyshire, I. D., ‘Opening up the Interior: The Impact of Railways upon the North Indian Economy and Society, 1860–1914’ (PhD Cambridge, 1985), ch. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The studies of Hurd, J., ‘Railways and the Expansion of Markets in India, 1861–1921’, Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), 263–88)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mukherjhee, M., ‘Railways and their Impact on Bengal's Economy: 1870–1920’, IESHR (04–06 1980)Google Scholar; and Matsui, T., Agricultural Prices in Northern India, 1861–1921 (Tokyo, 1976), 2 volsGoogle Scholar, clearly bring out such progressive market integration for lower value crops.

¹⁹ Such differential, commodity and regional, price movements were a crucial but hitherto neglected element in late 19th century Indian economic history. The data have been built up from district returns given in Prices and Wages in India [P & W] 1860–1920 (Calcutta Annual), and (for cash crops) the scattered data available in District Settlement Reports (SRs), Agricultural Statistics of British India [Agr Stats] (1883/84–1914/15 Annual), and in UP Railborne Trade Reports [RBTs] (1881/82–1920/21, Allahabad Annual); see Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, ch. 3.Google Scholar

²⁰ These comments are based upon returns in 1900s District Gazetteers [DGs], annual Agr Stats, and the Report of the Indian Cotton Committee (Calcutta, 1919)Google Scholar; see Derbyshire, ‘Opening up the Interior’, ch. 4, pp. 153–7.Google Scholar

²¹ See Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, ch. 4, pp. 157–62Google Scholar, and Hadi, S. A., The Sugar Industry of the United Provinces (Allahabad, 1902).Google Scholar

²² See the Report of the Indian Sugar Committee (Simla, 1920)Google Scholar; Prakash, S., ‘The Evolution of the Agrarian Economy of Gujarat (India), 1850–1930’ (PhD Cambridge, 1983), p. 168Google Scholar; and Harnetty, P., ‘Crop Trends in the Central Provinces: 1861–1921’, Modern Asian Studies [MAS], 11, 3 (07 1977).Google Scholar

²³ See Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, ch. 4, pp. 147–53.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 135–43, especially table 4:v, which put grain and ‘residual crop’ (which excludes chief cash crops but includes oilseed mixtures) at: 1885–89–0.806 acres per capita; 1890–94—0.831 acres; 1895–99—0.763 acres; 1900–04—0.832 acres; 1905—09—0.817 acres; 1910–14—0.842 acres.

²⁵ Calculated from UP RBTs. A fuller exposition of the development of both the wheat export trade and the inland grain trade is given in Derbyshire, ‘Opening up the Interior’, ch. 5.

²⁶ The interpretation of the UP ‘peasant economy’ below draws significantly upon the insights of Chayanov, A. V. (Thorner, D. (ed.), The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, Ills, 1966)Google Scholar, viewing the peasant family farm as an ‘organic whole’, with its labour a ‘fixed overhead’, and willing to tolerate varying degrees of ‘self exploitation’, while making allowances for specific North Indian institutional and social factors—for example the influence of caste upon labour inputs; joint family cultivation; and the use of hired labour.

²⁷ Detailed information upon the varying labour input, manure and seed requirements of different crops in late 19th century North India is available in Duthie, J. F. and Fuller, J. B., Field and Garden Crops of the North-Western Provinces (Allahabad, 1882–1893, 3 vols).Google Scholar

²⁸ It is important to take into account the value of fodder by-products when attempting to assess relative crop profitability in the North Indian peasant economy. This was made clear when in 1908 W. H. Moreland (Director of Agriculture), advising cultivators to switch from millets to cotton, was met with the sharp rejoinder, ‘And what would our bullocks eat?’ (UP Revenue Department [Rev. Dept.] File F 376/1908, ‘Note on Cattle Supply’, Uttar Pradesh State Archives [UPSA], Lucknow).

²⁹ This becomes clearly evident when wheat and grain export returns are plotted alongside the available annual yield figures (Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, p. 181Google Scholar, table 5: 1).

³⁰ Such ‘linkage’ was not, however, perfect in the Western commercial farming sense. The speed of switches between crops varied both sub-regionally and locally with respect to the number of alternative crops cultivable—a function of the climate, soil and irrigation facilities enjoyed by a particular tract; and socially, with respect to a cultivator's capital resources and ‘independence’. Family farm subsistence and fodder requirements further complicated market orientation. Price responsive cropping patterns were most evident on the cash crop core of a peasant's holding, and on the holdings of larger commercial farmers and small dependent growers deeply entangled in the market nexus.

³¹ Calculated from Col. Baird-Smith, R., Report on the Famine of 1860–1 in the NWP (PP 1862, 40)Google Scholar, and UP RBTs 1907/1908 and 1908/1909.Google Scholar

³² The classic contemporary work on North Indian ‘grain stores’ was that of MacDonnell, A. P., Report of the Foodgrain Supply in Bihar in 1874 (Calcutta, 1876)Google Scholar. Information on the reduction of ‘grain store’ levels in the UP is available in the annual Revenue Administration Reports [RARs] (for example, 1881/1882 pp. 5–7)Google Scholar, Gazetteers (for example Kheri DG 1905, p. 51)Google Scholar, and can be gleaned from provincial grain supply estimates made during this period—for example NWP and Oudh Scarcity Dept. F 31/1891, F 127/1898 serial 16, UP Scarcity Dept. November 1902 Serial 62 (UPSA).

³³ This was commented upon in the UP RARs of 1885/86 p. 67, and 1897/98 p. 62, and by the Etawah Collector in NWP and Oudh Scarcity Block 1899 nos 9–162 p. 68 (UPSA).

³⁴ 1880–84 to 1910–14 trade expansion is based upon data given in the annual UP RBTs. 1830–80 commercial growth is estimated from a comparison of T. Kessinger's figures for North Indian long and medium-distance commerce in 1830, ‘Regional Economy’ pp. 253–7Google Scholar in CEHI, with those given in the 1880–84 RBTs.

³⁵ Calculated in Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’ tables 6: xiii and 6: xiv p. 281.Google Scholar

³⁶ P & W returns show UP salt prices falling by 61% between 1861–65 and 1906–10, against a prevailing grain price rise of 56%; Kanpur betel nut prices remained stationary between the 1880s and 1900s and pepper prices fell by 33% (calculated from price lists in UP RBTs). The Index Numbers of Indian Prices: 1861–1931 (Calcutta Official Publication) report showed iron prices at Calcutta falling by 21% between 1871–75 and 1901–05 and the price of grey shirtings falling from Rs 7.44 per piece in 1866–70 to Rs 4.34 in 1896–1900. Only after 1900 were the windfall gains from such transport and technical innovations being exhausted.

³⁷ Land held with full proprietary rights carried a lower occupation tax incidence (the revenue rate), than land held as a tenant; occupancy tenant rentals were below those paid by tenants at will, which in turn were lower than rack rented sub-tenant rentals.

³⁸ High caste—Brahmin and Rajput—cultivators eschewed direct field labour themselves, so that each acre of land had to support both dependants and provide for farm labourer wages. Conversely, agriculturist families tilled the soil themselves, and some groups, particularly market gardeners, were further renowned for the additional industry of their womenfolk and children in agricultural activities. This lowered the per acre ‘dependency ratio’.

³⁹ Such a figure for an ‘independent cultivator elite’, with a further 30–40% of the cultivating community hopelessly and permanently indebted and dependent and a middling group of 40% emerges from a study of indebtedness and holding size data—see Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, ch. 6, pp. 225–43.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The UP Revenue demand increased by 28% between 1870 and 1914: during the corresponding period the value of ordinary grains, such as juar, increased by 68%, and the value of the revenue paying cash crops wheat by 91%, poppy by 50%, gur by 30% and cotton by 25%. (Calculated from Agr Stats and P & W.)

⁴¹ UP Rev. Dept. F 636/1912 ‘Note on Rent Rates’ by W. H. Moreland (UPSA) clearly showed this tendency at work with occupancy rates left unchanged—like revenue rates—for thirty-year periods between settlements during a period of rising agricultural price levels. In the Doab and Rohilkhand in 1910 occupancy rentals were only 60–80% of the level of unprotected rentals and a tendency to sub-let was evident. (Thus in 1919 18% of the NWP occupancy area was sublet, UP Rev. Dept. F 166/1920 UPSA.)

⁴² UP Rev. Dept. F 589/1916 (UPSA) and between the 1860s and 1900s the NWP occupancy area had increased by more than 12%.

⁴³ 1885 cart numbers are taken from Agr Stats; 1914 cart numbers are taken from the quinquennial stock census in the UP Season and Crop Report of 1914/15. Many of these additional carts represented a substantial ‘independent cultivator’ investment.

⁴⁴ The Muttra District SR (1879), pp. 90–3Google Scholar, and Morison, T., The Industrial Organisation of an Indian Province (London, 1911), p. 224Google Scholar, clearly delineate such growing rural–urban price integration.

⁴⁵ Report of the United Provinces Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee [PBEC], 1929–30 (Allahabad, 1931), ch. 3Google Scholar. Village survey evidence taken by the enquiry brought out a most diffuse pattern with, for example, the Jat village of Arramu (Aligarh district) which had a population of only 331, borrowing from 60 different moneylenders, who came from 27 different places within a seven-mile radius. (Ev. vol. 2). My examination of village notes for Bilari pargana (Moradabad district) further supports such an interpretation.

⁴⁶ In 1921 railborne exports per capita amounted to only 0.97 maunds in South Oudh, and 1.28 mds in Benares division and Gorrakpur and Basti compared to more than 2 mds in the west and centre of the province. (Calculated from 1920/21 UP RBT and 1921 UP Census.)

⁴⁷ In the 1911 Census E. A. H. Blunt noted that there was not a family in the entire Benares division without at least one member in Calcutta, Howrah, Assam, Burma, Bihar or Orissa earning supplementary income.

⁴⁸ Based upon the figures given by S. H. Freemantle, Report on Labour Supply in the United Provinces and Bihar (UP Rev. Dept. F 167/1906 UPSA), with an allowance made for savings brought home in person during seasonal visits to home villages. For migration from adjoining Bihar, see Yang, A., ‘Peasants on the Move: A Study of Internal Migration in India’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, X (1979), 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁹ See the comments in UP Rev. Dept. F 445/1915 ‘Condition of Ballia’ (UPSA), and the high plague mortality returns for this tract during the 1900s (1911 UP Census, pp. 57–71).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Such differences in wage rates, living standards and growth were frequently commented upon by itinerant district officers in contemporary RARs, Censuses, Gazetteers and surveys. Typical were the comments in the Muzzafarnagar DG (1903) p. 97Google Scholar, and Etah DG (1911), p. 102Google Scholar. Such differentials persist today, see Joshi, P. C., ‘Fieldwork Experience Relived and Reconsidered: The Agrarian Structure of Uttar Pradesh’, Journal of Peasant studies, 8, 4 (07 1981), 455–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Etienne, G., Studies in Indian Agriculture: The Art of the Possible (Berkeley, 1968), pt 2Google Scholar; Nair, K., In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (London, 1979), ch. 3.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, pp. 118 and 364.Google Scholar

⁵² The dissemination of cholera during and after important melas is clearly delineated in the UP Sanitation Dept. F 111/1909 ‘B’; UP Public Health Dept. F 275/1893 ‘B’; UP General Administration Dept. F 153/1906 UPSA.

⁵³ The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. X, p. 26 (from Hind Swaraj ch. ix, 22/11/1909) (Ahmedabad, 1963).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Calculated from the 1911 Census (which noted deaths of 1.3 million from plague in the United Provinces between 1901 and 1910), and the 1921 Census and UP Sanitation Dept. February 1919 ‘A’ Proceedings 1–4 (UPSA), which suggested that the 1918 UP influenza epidemic claimed 2.3 million lives above the normal mortality level.

⁵⁵ Overseas grain exports consisted (before 1910) exclusively of wheat—an urban and middle class foodstuff—and only 6–9% of the UP wheat crop was, on average, exported overseas during the period between 1892 and 1914, the bulk being sent to inland urban and port-city markets. Bumper exports were drawn, moreover, from record ‘glut year’ crops. (See Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, pp. 180–1.)Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Ibid., 190–201. Even Bhatia, B. M. (Famines in India)Google Scholar, who in many respects follows the ‘Nationalist/Immiserationist’ line in his interpretation of Indian famines between 1860 and 1900, is forced to accept the mitigation and eradication (ignoring, that is, the wartime 1943 Burma famine) of famine suffering after 1900, without furnishing a convincing explanation for this sudden turnaround in conditions.

⁵⁷ See Volin, L., A Century of Russian Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 59–60, 172–5 and 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the serious Russian famines of 1891–92 (which was coupled with a cholera epidemic), 1897–99 and 1901 and the man-made famines of 1921 and 1932–33. See Mallory, W. H., China: Land of Famine (New York, 1926)Google Scholar, for an analysis of the terrible 1876–79 North China famine disaster which claimed possibly 13 million lives— equivalent to the losses endured in all-India during 1876–80 and 1896–1900. It appears, however, that the spread of railways similarly improved grain flows and mitigated famine suffering in the food deficit provinces of North China after 1900 with only 0.5 million deaths being recorded during the similarly severe famine of 1920/21. (See Liang, E. P., China's Railways and Agricultural Development, 1875–1935 (Chicago, 1982), p. 132.)Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Some information on the severity of these 18th and early 19th century famines is available in Girdlestone, C. E. R., Report on Past Famines in the NWP and Oudh (Allahabad, 1968)Google Scholar, and in mid-19th century district statistical memoirs. T. Morison utilizing such sources later remarked that localized scarcity existed in different parts of the United Provinces in 1804, 1809, 1813, 1818, 1820, 1823, 1826, 1834, 1837/38, 1843 and 1849 and that, ‘if from these [district] histories an attempt were made to record all the famines great and small, in which people died of starvation, the list would be an amazingly long one, and the impression would be produced that famine was almost continuous in these provinces at that periody’ (Industrial Organisation, p. 304).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Famines changed in nature in the railway era as improving market integration spread the area experiencing high prices and thus potential suffering. Famine became more clearly a problem of lack of purchasing power (caused often by a fall in labour demand or a tightening of credit flow) for individuals, rather than one of absolute grain shortage. Contemporary observers anticipated A. Sen's ‘exchange entitlement’ model (Sen, A., Poverty and Famines. Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar in this respect. It appears, therefore, that distributionist improvements—at least temporary—were effected in the famine-free decades after 1920, to provide purchasing power or labour demand for vulnerable individuals. A second key change in post-rail famines was the progressive decline in aimless agriculturist migration to adjoining tracts, as with the integration of markets and demographic and cultivation growth this option, became no longer feasible. Migration instead became short-distance—for example, from ‘dry’ to ‘wet’ canal villages in the Doab, and more purposive—for example, by rail to port-city jute mills.

⁶⁰ Extra-village cultivation was particularly common in the closely hamleted East UP where PBEC village surveys showed that in the three Benares district villages of Chiraigaon, Dhangaria and Kashipur 397 acres were cultivated by villagers within the villages themselves and 314 acres in surrounding villages. (Ev. vol. 2). Even in the Upper Doab, renowned for its discrete nucleated settlements an examination of village notes for 58 villages in Meerut district during the 1900s reveals 7.5% of village areas being cultivated by outsiders. (Meerut Collectorate Records.)

⁶¹ See Hailey's, H. R. C. ‘Note on Holdings’, UP Rev Dept. F 505/1912 (UPSA).Google Scholar

⁶² Moradabad SR (1909), pp. 11–12Google Scholar. Also see Charlesworth, N., ‘The Origin of the Fragmentation of Holdings in British India: A Comparative Examination’ (in Robb, P. (ed.), Rural India: Land, Power and Society under British Rule. London, 1983, pp. 181–215)Google Scholar who notes in addition that during prosperous cycles labourers rented-in small plots of land and small landowners and occupancy tenants sub-let fields at high rents, further complicating the picture.

⁶³ There is some evidence of aggrandizement on the part of successful rich ‘independent’ cultivators and landowners, for example by Kurmis in the land-hungry East Trans-Gogra belt (UPPBEC, Ev. vol. 2, p. 366), so that land distribution may have become more uneven. However, it does appear that changes in the structure of the proprietary pyramid were limited, with the land losses by small and middling Rajput, Brahmin and Muslim high caste groups balanced by gains on the part of rising agriculturist, commercial and creditor groups. See Stokes, E., The Peasant and the Raj (Cambridge 1978), pp. 205–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Data are, however, lacking on changes in cultivated holding—proprietary and rented—distribution over time, to answer the key question concerning stratification within the cultivating community.

⁶⁴ My research suggests that UP handspun yarn output may have fallen from a high of 9.2 lakh maunds per annum during the 1850s to a low of less than 3 lakh maunds per annum during the 1900s (Derbyshire, , ‘Opening up the Interior’, table 8:i p. 364).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ibid., table 8:i pp. 364 and 361–71.

⁶⁶ Indian mills were unable to weave the coarse yarns employed in such khaddar/ garha cloth manufacture, since they would snap under the impact of the sudden movements of the existing powerlooms.

⁶⁷ Calculated from Chatterjee, A. C., Notes on the Industries of the United Provinces (Allahabad, 1908).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Moreland, W. H., ‘The Indian Peasant and his Critics’ (Edinburgh Review, 04 1922; p. 248)Google Scholar; Fuller, J. B., Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment (London, 1910), p. 230Google Scholar noted in a similar vein that the post-1860 agricultural price rise, ‘had the effect of transferring very large sums of money to the country from the towns’.

⁶⁹ The term ‘urban bias’ is employed here since during the period 1860–1920 as today (Lipton, M., Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development. London, 1977)— the levers of political power and of public communication were concentrated within urban areas. In 1911 UP newspaper circulation totalled only 0.22 million per annum (accounting for less than 0.5% of the population) and barely 3.5% of the province's population were literate. Interpretations of trends in the UP economy during this period from such written sources are liable to be partial and class based. Rural views remain unrecorded with only district officers' ‘cold weather’ tours and sporadic surveys providing fragmentary, and again not always reliable, glimpses of the surface below.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ As an agricultural province, West Bengal, like Bihar and the East UP, which already enjoyed advanced river communication facilities gained little boost from the introduction of railways. West Bengal's decline was, however, exacerbated by the eastward shift of the fertilizing deltaic river system—see Mukherjee, R., The Changing Face of Bengal: A Study in Riverine Economy (Calcutta, 1938).Google Scholar

⁷¹ Musgrave, P. J., review of Whitcombe, E., Agrarian Conditions, in MAS, 9 (1975), pp. 552–5.Google Scholar

⁷² Irwin, H. C., The Garden of India; or Chapters on Oudh History and Affairs (London, 1880)Google Scholar; Digby, , Prosperous British IndiaGoogle Scholar; Dutt, , India in the Victorian AgeGoogle Scholar; Fuller, J. B., The Empire of India (London, 1913)Google Scholar; Moreland, W. H., The Agriculture of the United Provinces (Allahabad, 1910)Google Scholar; Morison, , Industrial Organisation.Google Scholar

⁷³ Whitcombe, , Agrarian Conditions.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See Heston, A., ‘National Income’, p. 377 (in CEHI)Google Scholar; and Falkus, M. E., The Industrialisation of Russia: 1700–1914 (London, 1972), p. 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁵ Calculated from Latham, A. J. H., The International Economy and the Underdeveloped World, 1865–1914 (London, 1978), pp. 122–9Google Scholar; Lewis, , Growth and Fluctuations, p. 203Google Scholar; Kenwood, A. G. and Lougheed, A. L., The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1960 (London, 1971), p. 33.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Latham, , International Economy, p. 123.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ See Ruthenberg, H., Farming Systems in the Tropics (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar, ch. 2, for the natural limitations of tropical and sub-tropical soils.

⁷⁸ This applies to the period before the 1920s and concerns the failure, for example, actively to utilize railway rating schedules in a promotional manner, following the example set by Sergei de Witte; or to foster, for example, a strong indigenous steel industry during the 1880s based upon railway orders; or to protect and encourage sugar factories and high count cotton mills. The Government of India, while not slavishly ‘laissez faire’ was certainly influenced by the British industrialization tradition—which contrasted with, for example, the early modern state interventionist tradition of Tsarist Russia—and by the colonial circumstances of India, which left key sectors of the economy, for example the army and navy, purchasing equipment from India. At the same time failures were clear on the indigenous side with Bombay's mills' loss of the Chinese yarn and potential cloth market to Japan after its early lead a glaring example, as was the failure to develop other significant export-orientated industries.