Colonialism and the countryside
Exploring Official Archives
Introduction
- The zamindars of Bengal , travel to the the rajmahal hills where the paharias and the santhals lived , and then move west to the Deccan .
- The East India Company established its raj in the countryside , implemented its revenue policies .
- laws introduced by the state have consequences for people .
Bengal and the zamindars
- Colonial rule was first established in Bengal
- The earliest attempts were made to recorder rural society and establish a new regime of land right and a new revenue system .
An auction in burdwan
- In 1797 there was an auction in Burdwan
- It was as big public event
- The permanent settlement had come into operation in 1793.
- The East India company had fixed the revenue that each zamindar had to pay
- The purchases turned out to be servants and agents of the raja
- Over 95% of the sale at the auction was fictitious
The problem of unpaid revenue
- The permanent settlement, British officials hoped to resolve the problems they had been facing since the conquest of bengal .
- By the 1770s, the rural economy in bengal was in crisis , with recurrent famines and declining agricultural output .
- They thought to develop agriculture , trade and the revenue resources of the state by encouraging investment in agriculture
- Company officials thought that a fixed revenue demand ensure regular income
- The permanent settlement was made with the rajas and tuluqdars of bengal
- The zamindars had was not a landowner in the village but a revenue collector of the state
- The zamindars collected rent and paid the fixed amount and keep the excess as income
- The zamindar collected rent from the different villages .
why zamindars defaulted on payments
The reasons for this failure wee various :
First : The initial demands were very high
Second : It difficult for the ryots to pay their dues to the zamindars
Third : The revenue was invariable , regardless of the harvest , and had to be paid punctually
Fourth : Limited the power of the zamindar to collect rent form the ryot and manage
Measures taken by the state to control the zamindars
- The state subdue their authority and restrict their autonomy
- The zamindars troops were disbanded customs duties abolished.
- Their cutcheries bought under the supervision of a collector appointed by the company
- Zamindars lost their power to organise local justice and the local police .
- Jotedars and mandals - were only too happy to see the zamindar in trouble .
- in Burdwan alone there were over 30000 pending suits for arrears of rent payment in 1798 ..
The rise of the Jotedars
- A group of rich peasants were consolidating their position in the villages.
- In Francis , Buchanan's survey of the dinajpur district in north bengal we have a vivid description of this class of rich peasants known as jotedars .
- The jotedars were most powerful in north bengal .
- Rich peasants and village headmen were emerging as commanding figures in the countryside in one parts of bengal
zamindars resist
Zamindars lived in Urban areas , the jotedar were against zamindars
straggles of the zamindars to face the pressure from the state
- Fictitious sale was one such strategy
- Always take possession , At times their agents would be attacked by lathyals
The fifth report
- The fifth report as a report to submit to the British parliament
- The fifth report was a report on the administration and activities of the East India Company in India .
- The report was having 1002 pages It was submitted to the British parliament 1813 .
- The fifth report was one such report produced by a select committee .
- It become the basis of intense parliamentary debates on the nature of the East India Company 's rule in India .
- The evidence contained in the fifth report is in valuable .
- The fifth report exaggerated the collapse of traditional zamindari power as also overestimated the scale on which zamindars were losing their land .
The hoe and the plough
The wetlands of bengal to dries zones , from a region of settled cultivation one where shifting agriculture was practised .
In the hills of rajmahal
- In the early nineteenth - century , Buchanan travelled through the rajmahal hills
- the inhabitants of the rajmahal hill were known as paharias
- They lived around the rajmahal hills , substitution forest produce and practicing shifting cultivation
- They cleared patches of forest by cutting bushes and burning the undergrowth .
- The life of the paharias - as hunters , shifting cultivators, food gather , charcoal producers silkworm rearers was thus intimated connected to the forest.
Raids of the paharias
- The paharias frequently raided the plains of the settled agriculturists .these raids were important for them at the time of scarcity .
- Their raids were a way of asserting means of negotiating political relations with outsiders
- The zamindars on the plain areas had to pay regular tribute to the hill chief of the paharias
- During the 1770 the British a policy of extermination of the paharias
- But in 1780 when Augustus leveland became collector of bhagaipur , he proposed for pacification with the paharias
- The paharias chief were given an annual allowance and made responsible for the proper conduct of his people .
- They were also assigned the responsibility of maintaining the law and order in their
The santhals :pioneer settler
- At the end of 1810 Buchanan crossed ganjuriapahar , which was part of the rajmahal ranges passed through the rocky country beyond , and reached a village .
- On enquiry he discovered that the frontiers of cultivation here has been extended by the santhals
- They had moved into this area around 1800 , displaced the hill folk who lived on these lower slopes , cleared the forests and settled the land .
- The British gave land to the sunthals and peruaded them to settle in the foothills of rajmahal .
- By 1832 a large area was demarcated as Damin -i -koh and land of the santhals who lived within it
- After the demarcation of Damin- i -koh ,santhal settlement expanded rapidly from 40 santhal villages in the area in 1838 to 1473 villages by 1851 .
- The santhals soon realized that the land they bought under cultivation was slipping out of their lands
- The British started levying taxes on those lands and the money lenders were charging them with high rate of interest and look over their land in case of defaulters.
- By the 1850s, the santhals felt that the time had come to rebel against zamindars money lenders and the colonial state , in order to create an ideal world for themselves.
- It was after the santhal revolt (1855-56 ) the santhal pargana was carving out 5500 square miles from the districts of Bhagalpur and birbhum
A Revolt in the countryside
The Bombay Deccan
- Later period , and explore what was happening in the countryside in the Bombay Deccan
- Through the 19th century , peasants in various parts of India rose in revolt against moneylenders and grain dealers .
Account books are burnt
- The movement began at supa , a large village in Poona district
- On 12 may 1875 , ryots from surrounding rural areas gathered and attacked the shopkeepers demanding their bahi khatas and dept bonds
- They burnt the khatas , looted grain shops , and some cases set fire to the hoers of sahukars
- To prevent the revolt , the British established many police posts in village , troops were rushed to the areas of the revolt .
A new revenue system
- The permanent revenue system was not extended beyond bengal
- One reason was the since the revenue was fixed , the state could not claim any share of the increased revenue .
David Ricardo
- He was an eminent economist in England in 1820.
- His economic theories influenced the revenue policies of the British in India
- Hid idea of land ownership was introduced in the Bombay Deccan
- Land owner should claim only the average rent
- There the zamindars seemed to have turned into renters , leading out land and living on the rental incomes.
- The revenue system that was introduced in the Bombay Deccan came to be known as the ryotwari
Revenue demand and peasant debt .
- The first revenue settlement in the Bombay Deccan was made in the 1820
- The revenue demand in the Bombay Deccan was very high .
- In many places peasants desired their village and migrated to new regions
- The countryside was devastated by a famine in the year 1832-34
- The cultivators borrowed money from the money lender to pay the revenue
- By the 1840 , officials were finding evidence of alarming levels of peasants indebted everywhere
- They needed money to buy seeds and land
Then came the cotton boom
- In 1857 the cotton , supply association was founded in Britain and in 1859 the Manchester cotton company was formed .
- When the America civil was broke out in 1861 , a wave of panic spread through cotton circles in Britain .
- Frantic message ,cotton were sent to India and elsewhere to increase cotton exports to Britain
- In Bombay .cotton merchants visited the cotton districts to assess supplies and encouragement cultivation
- By 1862 over 90% of cotton imports into Britain were coming from India
Credit dries up
- Shoulder and export merchants in Maharastra stopped long term credit and started demanding repayment of debts .
- The Government made new settlement and increased revenue demand from 50 to 100 %.
- The peasants were utterly dependent on the money lender for survival. But the money lender refusing to come .
Experiences of injustice
- There was customary norm that the interest charged . could not be more than the principal. It put limit on the money lender's exactions. It could be counted as fair interest .
- Under British rule his norm broke down Deccan Riots commission cited that the interest on a loan of Rs 100.
- They ryots came to see the money lender as devious and deceitful.
- The ryots complained of money lender manipulating laws and forging accounts. limitation law was passed in 1859.
Deeds and bond
Deeds and bonds were regarded as a symbol of the new oppressive system.
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Class 12 History