Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal

This book examines the politics and culture of eastern India's landed chiefs.

John R. McLane (Author)

9780521526548, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 July 2002

372 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

This book examines the politics and culture of landholding in eastern India. Professor McLane explores the dual and sometimes conflicting roles of the zamindars, the landed chiefs, in eighteenth-century western Bengal during the decline of the Mughal empire and the rise of the British hegemony. He focuses on zamindari rent extraction, techniques of coercion, and the meaning of gift-giving and gift-receiving. He shows how the zamindars kept alive the rituals, patronage, and other traditions of normative Hindu kingship for their subjects in the villages while they extracted revenue from the peasantry and intermediate gentry for the government of the Mughals and then the English East India Company. He argues that the increased commercialization and efforts to maximize land revenues imposed severe strains on the paternalistic and gift-oriented culture of Bengal's huge landlords. This analysis is illustrated with a case study of Bengal's most important and controversial zamindari, the Burdwan raj.

List of tables
Preface and acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Select glossary
Map of southwest Bengal
Part I. Bengal: 1. Introduction
2. Nazims of Bengal and the large zamindars
3. Collecting rents and revenues
4. Coercion
5. Political gifts and patronage
Part II. Burdwan: 6. Meghal Burdwan and the rise of the Burdwan raj
7. Burdwan's expansion
8. The Maratha invasions, 1742–1751
9. Zamindars and the transition to Company rule
10. The famine of 1770
11. Revenue farming, 1771–1777
12. Zamindari family politics
the Burdwan raj, 1770–1775
13. The politics of Burdwan family debt and marriages, 1775–1778
14. Testing the limits, 1778–1790
15. Burdwan under the decennial and permanent settlements
16. Patnis and the elusive quest for independence and security
17. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]