SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The acquisition of the right to the revenue of Bengal by the East India Company in 1765 altered fundamentally the nature of the British connection with India. An important branch of Mughal government was now taken over by a trading corporation. But the change was not as dramatic as it might have been, for the British were content at first to work with the old Mughal system. Subsequently, they introduced a series of changes in revenue administration, but there was always a gap between policy as it evolved in Calcutta and practice in the districts of Bengal. This thesis seeks to examine the factors which contributed to create that gap with reference to one unit of the Bengal Presidency - Sylhet district. The opening pages deal with the remnants of the Mughal system in Sylhet and the peculiar environmental characteristics of the district. The scene having been set, the main body of the thesis is devoted to a consideration of the influence on the nature of revenue administration in the district of a succession of district officers. The interaction of these local officials with the central authorities at Calcutta on the one hand, and with their Indian subordinates and Sylhetti society on the other, is fully explored. The importance of the process of revenue settlement has been duly recognized and the several revenue settlements of Sylhet in the period 1765 to 1792 have been described. This study is concerned with day to day revenue administration in a difficult and remote frontier tract in a formative period of British rule. British experience in Sylhet had no recognizable impact on general policy, but, by the same token, plans or directives and resolutions emanating from the centre were not as influential in Sylhet as might be thought.