SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine agrarian production in eighteenth century eastern Rajasthan at two levels. First, we attempt to establish the chronology of the trends in major indices of agricultural production using the annual revenue records of six representative qasbas or townships. The wealth of varied data available in the revenue and related records of the eighteenth century Jaipur state made it possible to estimate trends in the size of the agricultural product, the variations in cropping patterns and the secular movements of foodgrain prices. Second, a primary concern of the thesis has been to locate the secular trends in production within the context of the interaction between the state and the agrarian production system. A discussion of the environmental context of agriculture in the region leads to an analysis of the logic of the system of taxation that these realities predicated. The complexities of the functioning of the socio-economic system have been analysed by an examination of the mechanism of redistribution of the surplus, the marketing of foodgrains and the provision of rural credit that underpinned the agrarian production system. We argue that the policies of the state in these spheres were interlocked elements of a coherent agrarian policy that sought to actively promote private investment and raise productivity in agriculture. The effective implementation of the policy however was crucially dependent upon the ability of the state to maintain effective control over each element. The analysis of the changing interaction between the state and rural society in a phase of agrarian expansion and a period of recession provides a perspective on the nature of the linkage between political stability and agrarian production and the impetus towards institutional changes in the mechanism of revenue collection during the eighteenth century.