The Peasant and the Raj
Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India

These twelve essays explore the nature of south Asian agrarian society.

Eric Stokes (Author)

9780521297707, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 July 1980

320 pages
21.6 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.4 kg

'This scholarly collation of Professor Stokes's essays on peasant India under the British Raj will surely become obligatory reading for students in South East Asia and beyond who are concerned with the historical background to modern rural India. Social scientists, agronomists as well as historians will find in these well written pages scope for stimulating thought and discussion.' Journal of Administration Overseas

These twelve essays explore the nature of south Asian agrarian society and examine the extent to which it changed during the period of British rule. The central focus of the book is directed to peasant agitation and violence and four of the studies look at the agrarian explosion that formed the background to the 1857 Mutiny. The essays give a coherent historical treatment of the Indian peasant world, and the paperback edition of this successful book will be of interest to the student of peasant studies and to the sociologist as well as to development economists and agronomists generally.

1. The first century of British colonial rule: social revolution or social stagnation?
2. Privileged land tenure in village India in the early nineteenth century
3. Agrarian society and the Pax Britannica in northern India in the early nineteenth century
4. The land revenue systems of the North-Western Provinces and Bombay Deccan 1830-80: ideology and the official mind
5. Traditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nationalism: the context of the 1857 Mutiny Rebellion
6. Nawab Walidad Khan and the 1857 Struggle in the Bulandshahr district
7. Rural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts
8. Traditional elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857: some aspects of rural revolt in the upper and central Doab
9. The structure of landholding in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1948
10. Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension
11. Peasants, moneylenders and colonial rule: an excursion into Central India
12. The return of the peasant to South Asian history.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]