I am grateful to the Research Board of the University of Leicester for financial assistance with the research (on Indian agrarian history) of which this paper is a by-product.

¹ The village community is currently the property of anthropologists. So complete has been its capture that the annexation of Indian anthropology by the village community has aroused protests (e.g. Dumont, Louis and Pocock, D., ‘Village Studies’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. I (1957), pp. 23–42)Google Scholar; but the legitimacy of the village community as a unit of anthropological analysis appears to have been reaffirmed (e.g. Mandelbaum, David G., Society in India (Berkeley, 1970, 2 vols, Vol. II, pp. 325 ff.).Google Scholar The dominance of the anthropologists, however, is a recent phenomenon. Prior to the post-war anthropological boom, the village community was the plaything of historians and administrators. This article is a survey (and interpretation) of the polyglot literature they produced.

² Between 1860 and 1917 a fierce discussion raged about the Russian village community which bore many parallels with the Anglo-Indian debate. See Gerschenkron, A. ‘Agrarian Policies and Industrialisation: Russia 1861–1917’, in Habakkuk, H. J. and Postan, M. M. (eds) The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. VI (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; idem., ‘The Problem of Economic Development in Russian Intellectual History of the Nineteenth Century’ in Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; essays by Byrnes, R. F., Malia, M. E. and Radkey, O. L. H. in Simmons, E. J. (ed.), Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)Google Scholar; Mosse, W. E., ‘Stolypin's Villages’, Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 43 (1965–1966).Google Scholar

³ See Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar; and Bearce, G. D., British Attitudes Towards India (London, 1961).Google Scholar Louis Dumont has traced the conclusion of the ‘conservative’ image in ‘The “Village community” from Munro to Maine’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, No. IX (12 1965), pp. 67–89.Google Scholar See also Obeyesekere, Gananath, Land Tenures in Village Ceylon (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 273 ff.Google Scholar

⁴ SirMetcalfe, C. T., ‘Minute on the Settlement in the Western Provinces’, 7 11 1830Google Scholar, in Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, III—Revenue, Parliamentary Papers, 1831–1832, Vol. XI, pp. 331–2.Google Scholar Dumont (op. cit.) traced the origin of Metcalfe's description to ‘the original that will be endlessly copied and varied’, in Munro's ‘Report from Anantapur’, 15 05 1806Google Scholar, reprinted in Wilks, Mark, Historical Sketches of the South of India in an Attempt to Trace the History of Mysore… (1810), Hammick, Murray (ed.) (Mysore, 1930) Vol. I, p. 139.Google Scholar Subsequent versions—both in the nineteenth-century official literature and in the work of modern anthropologists—are documented by Dumont.

⁵ Malcolm found similarities in Central India: Never did a country afford such proofs of the imperishable nature of this admirable institution. After the Pindarry war, every encouragement was held out for the inhabitants to return to their desolate homes. In several districts, particularly those near Nerbudda, many of the villages had been waste for more than thirty years. The inhabitants who had been scattered, followed all occupations: many Potails, who had been obliged to leave their lands, had become plunderers, and remained at or near their ruined villages; some of their relations and friends followed their example; others cultivated grounds at a distance of several hundred miles from their homes; while a great majority went to the large towns, where they found a temporary asylum, and obtained subsistence by labouring in gardens or fields. But there is no people in whose hearts the love of the spot where they were born seems more deeply implanted than the Hindus; and those of Central India, under all their miseries and dispersion, appear never for a moment to have given up the hope of being restored to their homes. The families of each village, though remote from each other, maintained a constant communication—intermarriages were made, and the links that bound them together were only strengthened by adversity. When convinced that tranquility was established they flocked to their roofless houses. Infant Potails (the second and third in descent from the emigrator) were in many cases carried at the head of these parties. When they reached their villages, every wall of a house, every field was taken possession of by the owner or cultivator, without dispute or litigation amongst themselves or with government; and in a few days everything was in progress as if it had never been disturbed. A Memoir of Central India (London, 1924, 2nd ed.), Vol. II, pp. 20–2.Google Scholar See also Tod, James, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Crooke, W. (ed.) (London, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 574 ff.Google Scholar

⁶ Goodbine, R. N., Report on the Village Communities of the Deccan, Selections from the Records of the Government of Bombay, IV (Bombay, 1852).Google Scholar

⁷ Goldsmid, H. E. and Wingate, G., ‘Joint Report’ (17 October 1840), reprinted in Papers Connected with the Bombay Revenue and Settlement System (Calcutta, 1883), p. vii.Google Scholar

⁸ Wingate, G. to revenue commissioner, southern division, No. 239 (23 12 1848)Google Scholar, Ibid., p. xli.

⁹ Strachey, J. to commissioner, Rohilcund (16 July 1855), in Selections from the Records of the government of the North-West Provinces, Part XXIX, Art. III, Frequency of Transfer of Proprietary Title (Agra, 1856), pp. 212–14.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Kemble, J. M., The Saxons in England (London, 1849, 2 vols), pp. v–viGoogle Scholar; see also SirPalgrave, Francis, History of the Anglo-Saxons (London, 1876, new ed.).Google Scholar

¹¹ Kemble, , The Saxons in England, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., pp. 56–7.

¹³ For the Oxford Germanists, see Addison, W. G., J. R. Green (London, 1946), pp. 46 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Stubbs, W., The Constituational History of England (Oxford, 1880, 3rd ed.), Vol. I, p. 35.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cam, H., Law-Finders and Law-Markers in Medieval England (London, 1962), p. 193.Google Scholar This is especially true of a large part of Stubb's second chapter, ‘The Anglo-Saxon System’. Petit-Dutaillis's criticisms are also illuminating: see Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, Studies and Notes Supplementary to Stubbs's Constituational History, Rhodes, W. E. and Waugh, W. T. (trans.) (Manchester, 1951).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Stubbs, , op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 52.

¹⁸ Green, J. R., A Short History of the English People (1907, new ed.), p. 4.Google Scholar For the proximity of Freeman's position to Green's see Freeman, E. A., The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times (London, 1873, 2nd ed.), pp. 8, 18Google Scholar; and The History of the Norman Conquest of England (Oxford, 1877, 3rd ed.), Vol. I, pp. 80 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Nothing symbolizes the dependence of English historians on the German historical school better than the fact that the first article in the first volume of the English Historical Review was Acton on ‘German Schools of History’ (Vol. I, 1886, pp. 7–42).Google Scholar

²⁰ Maine, H. S., Village Communities in the East and West (London, 1876, 3rd ed.), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar Cf. the title of SirPhear's, John The Aryan Village in India and Ceylon (London, 1880).Google Scholar Probably the best exposition of Maine's methodology was the exposition he himself gave in ‘The Effects of Observation of India on Modern European Thought’, the Rede lecture for 1875, reprinted in Village Communities in the East and West, pp. 205–39.Google Scholar The standard work on evolutionary (social) thought in the nineteenth century, Burrow's, J. W. Evolution and Society (Cambridge, 1966), discusses Maine's methodology, pp. 142 ff.Google Scholar, and Tylor's, (which was very similar), pp. 249 ff.Google Scholar There are a number of striking anticipations of Maine's application of historical and comparative method to India's relationship with Europe. See SirCampbell, George, India As It May Be (London, 1853), p. xi.Google Scholar

²¹ Spencer, H.. Man Versus the State (London, 1884), p. 1.Google Scholar

²² Maine, H. S., Village Communities East and west (London, 1876, 3rd ed.), p. 230Google Scholar; Maine, to Salibury, , 4 02 1878Google Scholar, quoted in Feaver, George, From Status to Contract (London, 1969), p. 215.Google Scholar

²³ Maine, to Lytton, , 7 06 1878Google Scholar, quoted in Feaver, , op. cit., pp. 219–20.Google Scholar

²⁴ Mill, J. S., ‘Mr. Maine on Village Communities’, Fortnightly Review, No. IX (05 1871), pp. 544, 549Google Scholar; reprinted in Mill, J. S., Dissertations and Discussions, (London, 1875, 2nd ed.), Vol. IV, pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

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²⁶ For more extended expositions of the case for free trade in land see three other Cobden Club publications: Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries edited by Probyn, J. W. (London, 1881, new ed.)Google Scholar, especially the essays on ‘Primogeniture’ by George C. Brodrick and ‘The Land Laws of England’ by Hoskyns, C. Wren; Brodrick's England Land and English Landlords (London, 1881)Google Scholar; and Kay's, J. Free Trade in Land (London, 1881).Google Scholar The actual campaign is described in Thompson's, F. M. unpublished Oxford D.Phil. thesis, ‘The Economic and Social Background of the English Landed Interests, 1840–1870’ (1956), pp. 1–9.Google Scholar In the account of the Indian village community which he contributed to Systems of Land Tenure (cit. infra), Sir George Campbell was careful to dissociate the contemporary Indian village community from ‘any of the features of communism’.

²⁷ In SirHunter, W. W., The Life of Lord Mayo (London, 1876), Vol. II, pp. 165–6.Google Scholar

²⁸ Tylor, E. B., ‘Maine's Village Communities’, Quarterly Review, No. CXXXI (1871), pp. 176–89Google Scholar, qutoed in Feaver, , op. cit., pp. 121–2.Google Scholar

²⁹ Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society (New York, 1872), p. 552.Google Scholar

³⁰ George, H., Progress and Poverty (London, 1883)Google Scholar; de Laveleye, E., Primitive Property, Marriott, G. R. L. (trans.) (London, 1878)Google Scholar; Brodrick, George C., England Land and English Landlords (London, 1881)Google Scholar; and Engels, F., The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (London, 1889).Google Scholar Engels follows Morgan's approbatory line, ostensibly in fulfilment of an ambition of Marx, but cf. Marx's impassioned denunciation of the Indian village community, in Selected Works, Adoratsky, V. (ed.) (London, 1942, 2 vols), Dutt, C. P. (trans.), Vol. II, pp. 655–6Google Scholar: We must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns with no events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindustan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.

³¹ Vinogradoff, P., Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892), pp. 30 ff.Google Scholar Vinogradoff discussed ‘this attempt to connect the development of historical study with the course of politics’ with Maitland. See Maitland, to Vinogradoff, , 12 03 and 28 04 1889Google Scholar, in Fifoot, C. H. S. (ed.), The Letters of Frederic William Maitland (London, 1965), pp. 57–60.Google Scholar

³² Ensor, R. C. K., ‘Some political and economic interactions in Later Victorian England’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. XXXI (1949), pp. 17–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁵ Parliamentary Papers, 1881, Vol. XVIIIGoogle Scholar, Report of H.M. Commission of Inquiry into the Working of the Land and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, p. 8.Google Scholar Virtually the entire report is an astonishingly thorough-going application of the ‘relativist’ and evolutionary approach pioneered by Maine.

³⁶ de Coulanges, F., The Origin of Properly in Land, Ashley, M. (trans.) (London, 1881).Google Scholar

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³⁹ SirCampbell, George, ‘The Tenure of Land in India’, in Systems of Land Tenure, pp. 222–3.Google Scholar Cf. Campbell's earlier classification of the Indian village community, into democratic and aristocratic types, in Modern India (London, 1853, 2nd ed.), pp. 82 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Baden-Powell, B. H., The Land-Systems of British India (Oxford, 1892, 3 vols), Vol. I, p. 106.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 128.

⁴² Baden-Powell, B. H., The Indian Village Community (London, 1896), pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar But see Hewitt's, J. P. reply: ‘The Communal Origin of Indian Land Tenures’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., Vol. 29 (1897), pp. 628–41.Google Scholar Hewitt argued that land in villages newly settled by matriarchal groups was held in common, at least amongst Dravidians, , ‘In these South Indian villages,’ he wrote, ‘the claim of any individual to a right of property in land he had worked would have been regarded as rank rebellion’ (p. 632).Google Scholar And these customs the Dravidians exported to the north, although individual property—introduced by Aryan immigrants—competed for ascendency.

⁴³ Baden-Powell, , The Indian Village Community, p. 443.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 399.

⁴⁵ Ibid., pp. 400–1.

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⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 344–5.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 346.

⁴⁹ Maitland, F. W. and Pollock, F., The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (Cambridge, 1895, 1st ed.; I used the 1968 reissue of the 2nd ed. of 1899), Vol. I, p. 623.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., Vol. I, p. 634.

⁵¹ Maitland, and Pollock, , op. cit., Vol. I, p. 616.Google Scholar

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⁵³ Ibid., p. 688. Cf. Vinogradoff's comments on this aspect of Maitland's work; which include the epithet, ‘Economic and legal development starts from the notion of “mine” and not from that of “ours”’, in Vinogradoff, P., Collected Papers, (Oxford, 1928, 2 vols), Vol. I, pp. 259–60.Google Scholar For the sake of brevity, I have slightly altered the sequence of sentences in this quotation.

⁵⁴ ‘The exposition given by Maitland and Vinogradoff and closely followed by Sir Frank Stenton has been modified for certain areas; it has seldom been questioned as a whole.’ Aston, T. H., ‘The Origins of the Manor in England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. Vol. 8 (1958), p. 59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar