Agrarian Economic history in modern India had a particular historiography around it and we

see a lot of changes in terms of issues, themes and problems addressed by historians since the
colonial period to contemporary times.
My focus will be on the recent work ‘The Great Agrarian Conquest: The Colonial Reshaping
of a Rural World’ by the foremost economic historian of India Neeladri Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya argues that the notion of agrarian which is ‘taken for granted' has history which
needs to be explored. We will look at how modern Indian agrarian economic history came
into being, its importance and what are the themes around which it had been developed,
covering the period 1800s to contemporary period till about 1980. As we know that the first
economic historiography comes from colonial writers then we have nationalist writing,
subaltern studies and some other contemporary debates on agrarian economic history. Dr
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Binay Bhushan Chaudhari were some important figures in
economic history.

Colonial writings: - From the early 19th century, the British prioritized agriculture and land
due to the significance of land revenues as their primary income source. Starting from the
1760s, they sought to rationalize India's land revenue systems, leading to extensive studies
and writings on Indian agriculture. The Permanent Settlement in Bengal focused on
establishing agreements with landlords, who collected revenue but did not cultivate the land
themselves. This resulted in fewer detailed studies on Bengal's agriculture compared to the
Ryotwari settlements in the south and west and the Mahalwari settlements in northern India,
where there were detailed examinations of tenancy and rent systems.

In the early 19th century, British officials focused on generating revenue, leading to detailed
studies of peasants and agrarian society to understand productivity and revenue shares, which
constituted over 50% of government income into the 1900s and 1910s. The 1820s and 1830s
saw the first statistical accounts and mapping of agrarian resources.

Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, a Scottish doctor, documented agrarian resources, relations,

labor, and different castes across Bengal and South India. Colin Mackenzie's collection is
another rich source from this period. These official records aimed to understand Indian
society for governance, but were biased, portraying British rule as liberating India from
chaos. James Mill's "History of British India" (1819), based on East India Company reports,
further shaped this narrative. The Fifth Report of the Select Committee (1813) provided
detailed information on the agrarian economy and society, showcasing British rule as
scientific and rational.

By the 1840s and 1850s, there was a demand for recording the rights of different classes of
cultivators, leading to a series of tenancy acts protecting certain groups based on their
histories. This period saw localized writings on agrarian societies in Bengal, Madras, and
western India. In the 1870s and 1880s, these reports became the basis for imperial gazetteers
at the district level. The first census in 1871-72 further aimed to understand agrarian societies
by counting people, communities, castes, and customs, complemented by works like Risley's
on Bengal and Crooke's on the North Provinces.
After the 1857 revolt, understanding agrarian societies became crucial for revenue and army
recruitment. This knowledge was also a response to challenges from the educated middle
class and frequent famines, such as those in 1874, 1877, 1877-78, and the late 19th and early
20th centuries. The first famine commission in 1881 and its reports provided additional
insights into agrarian conditions.

Nationalist writings: - In 1870 & 1880s we had the first challenges coming from the
nationalist writing on Economy. Dadabhai Naroji’s poverty and un-British rule in India
(1867), then R C Dutt, Economic history of India, he wrote five open letters to Curzon
arguing that the famines have been caused by misplaced British policies and the
amalgamated book came out in 1900. Huge debate happened because of that both in India
and in England. journalist William digby was also looking at why these famines are
happening, what are the conditions of the agrarian society, how India has been impoverished
by the British. Lord Curzon had very little difficulty in answering Dutt because he showed
that land revenue assessment had declined over time and it was much less than what R C
Dutt was saying and these were not the cause of famines. Famines did occur in other places
and were results of natural calamities. Government has spent a lot on famine relief.
Nationalist challenge focused around colonial policy, policy of free trade, lack of investment,
question of deindustrialization and overall, the idea that India actually has become more
dependent on agriculture compared to what it was when the British came.

Agrarian history became politicized at least at a discourse by criticizing policies. For

instance, railways. Britishers say that we brought in railways and the nationalists criticized
that its main function is to help in foreign trade and it’s taking away investible surplus, the
drain of wealth theory and all. Ranade called that India has become a plantation for the
British like Ireland and West Indies.

In late 19th century due to famines and lots of deaths agrarian societies started responding to
British through movements such as Deccan riots, Pabna revolt etc. But these were not on
massive scale which it acquired later under Gandhi’s leadership. Peasants of Champaran
were exploited by indigo plantation owners. Gandhi collected detailed information of people
and their condition through interviews and petitions. It becomes an important source of
agrarian history of that region. Colonial state also sets policies of public works and
development in order to respond to the nationalist challenge. So, there are certain attempts
for instance canal colonies were set up in Punjab in 1870s to develop pasture land and
different canals systems were developed which irrigate and makes Punjab a truly agrarian
society. Neeladri Bhattacharya also mentions it in ‘The great agrarian conquest.

According to Bhattacharya the agrarian colonisation was a deep conquest. This conquest was
not driven by a unitary vision. There was no pre-scripted plan that the colonial state put into
effect. Officials like Henry Lawrence, John Lawrence, Marquess of Dalhousie, and James
Wilson acted in different ways. But these differences are articulated, negotiated, and
transcended and the authority of imperium is expressed. He focuses on questions like How
did people accepted the colonial regime of laws and categories, its redefinition of what was
normal and permissible? How was the new habitus constituted and naturalized? What, indeed,
signifies a general acceptance and normalization?

Bhattacharya argues that resolving rural sector issues requires addressing agrarian problems
by examining labor forms, tenancy cultivation, market interlinkages, prices, and rents. This
approach marks a shift from traditional land revenue and nationalist agrarian crisis histories,
emphasizing regional and intra-regional variations rather than viewing the agrarian sector as
homogeneous. The colonization process had to adapt to diverse social contexts and
environmental conditions.

David Ludden also highlights these variations, examining differences between wet and dry
zones, eastern and western India, and regions like Bengal and Punjab. He criticizes how
agrarian history has often been overshadowed by national and state historiographies. The
colonial government's new laws institutionalized dominant caste lineages' identities, leading
social movements to seek state recognition and protection. The privatization of village lands
marginalized the poor, while commercial agriculture and urbanization increased labor
demand, resulting in juxtaposed growth and decline, wealth and poverty, and vitality and
distress in the modern agrarian landscape.

In mid 1980s rural was assumed as synonymous to agrarian. According to Bhattacharya, it is

important to explore how the agrarian came into being as the universal rural. idea of the
agrarian, has itself to be problematised and historicised. British looks at India as an agrarian
society composed of peasants and other forms of livelihood like hunters,tribes and non-
agricultural groups were absent from their vision. Canal colonies tells the story how they
settled those areas, brought people and those canal colonies became the source for large-scale
wheat production which was exported. Nationalists said that these exports continued even
when India was suffering from great famines especially in 1890s.

Malcolm Darling's "The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt" (1925) explores the
developmental strategies adopted by the colonial state in response to emerging nationalist
movements. Detailed studies of local societies, such as those prompted by the Punjab Land
Alienation Act and the Chhota Nagpur Land Alienation Act (a response to the Birsa
movement), aimed to protect tribal lands and divide Indian society by distinguishing between
tribal lands and those of Indian moneylenders. These studies influenced political strategies,
leading to the creation of partially and fully excluded areas to limit Congress's influence in
tribal and frontier regions.

Neeladri Bhattacharya emphasizes that economic history should be viewed as a history of

interlinked subsistence systems, fluid landscapes, and overlapping occupational boundaries.
Changes in the agrarian economy affect foresters and vice versa, indicating multiple layers
within the 'agrarian' that must be carefully unpacked.

After independence: - By the 1980s, agrarian history had emerged as a significant focus.
The 1960s and 1970s saw widespread social and peasant movements across India, leading to
debates on whether Indian agriculture remained feudal, contributing to stagnating or
declining productivity. These debates examined the complexities of agrarian relations,
including interactions between cultivators, landowners, tenants, and agricultural laborers, and
how these dynamics hindered agricultural development. Historians argued that colonial
agricultural policies and rule had impeded agricultural progress.

In the 1950s and 1960s, historical research concentrated on colonial revenue policies.
However, by the 1970s and 1980s, the focus shifted to the complex processes at the ground
level, analyzing the actual functioning of the agrarian economy and its interaction with the
colonial market. The global interest in peasant movements and economies in the 1960s was
influenced by events like the Vietnamese resistance and the Chinese revolution. In India,
questions arose about pervasive poverty and agricultural productivity. Subaltern studies
began in the 1980s, emphasizing peasantry and revolutionizing the study of social
movements and history.

By the 1990s, contemporary farmers' movements differed from the earlier peasant
movements of the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on commercial farming and market access
issues rather than tenant and sharecropper concerns. Agrarian relations remained important,
but the period saw changes such as overproduction, self-sufficiency in food crops, and
agricultural diversification. Interests shifted to farmers' movements, ecological issues, and
groundwater concerns.

Conclusion: - In this way we see that how first set of agrarian history comes from colonial
writers in order to extract high land revenues and to establish their rule, then we have
nationalist response. In 1870s Subaltern studies emerged there too the main focus was peasant
and their issues. Neeladri Bhattacharya’s The great agrarian conquest is based on fundamental
question, why and how does a colonizer attempt to take control of a complex landscape and
peoples? This book questions the category of ‘Agrarian’. Bhattacharya’s consistent effort
then is to uncover the habitus of such men, to understand what moved them and how they
reacted to a new world around them or in other words how people reacted towards colonial
policies and all. We see a shift in agrarian historiography in earlier decades the focus was on
revenue policies and agrarian crisis and famines and in recent writings the subject was
various agrarian relations, different forms of labours, functioning of agrarian system and its
interaction with markets.