Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Author(s): D. A. Washbrook
Source: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2001), pp.
372-383
Published by: BRILL
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632357
Accessed: 04/12/2010 09:12
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bap.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient.
http://www.jstor.org
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA
D.A. WASHBROOK*
A ReviewArticleof:
Until relatively recently, the eighteenth century was one of the most neglected
periods in the history of South Asia. Sandwiched between the high points of
Mughal imperial splendour in the seventeenth century and British imperial
might in the nineteenth, it was widely dismissed as an epoch of decay, chaos,
greed and violence. However, in the last couple of decades, it has started to
undergo a serious re-appraisal. It was during the eighteenth century that what
might be termed the point of gravity in global history shifted decisively from
East to West, from Asia to Western Europe and North America. Moreover,
events that took place in South Asia were critical to this shift: the rise of the
English East India Company to dominance in Mughal India represented the first
instance of the European 'conquest' of a major Asian power and also provided
a platform-of men, money and materielle-for the subjugation of the entire
region from the eastern Mediterranean to the South China Sea. Understand-
ing what happened in India in the eighteenth century has become central to
* Dr. D.A. Washbrook, St. Antony's College, Oxford University, 62 Woodstock Rd.,
Oxford,OX26JF, England,david.washbrook@st.antonys.oxford.ac.uk.
growth. This stands in sharp contrastto the general perspectiveon the epoch
advancedby Irfan Habib,which takes economic decline to have become estab-
lished much earlier,with the waning of Mughalimperialpower.3Chaudhuryand
Prakashadd importantsupportto the 'revisionist'interpretationsassociatedwith
ChristopherBayly, AndreWink and MuzaffarAlam, who see Mughalpolitical
decline in the context of secular economic growth.4With regardto the second
half of the century,however,Chaudhury'sargumentis seriously questionedby
the more recent researchesof Rajat Datta. In examining the commercialisation
of Bengal, Datta casts doubton the accuracyof data suppliedby contemporary
Company officials, who had an interestin maximising the appearanceof eco-
nomic decline, not least to reduce the levels of revenue which they were
required to remit to their superiorsin Calcutta. Chaudhury'scase rests very
heavily on the uncriticaluse of this same data. In contrast,Datta surmisesthat,
while episodes such as the famine of 1770 and increased pressureof revenue
extractionmay have slowed growth in the last decades of the eighteenthcen-
tury, contemporaryimages of mass immiserationwere greatly exaggerated.5
In many ways, it is supremelyironic that Chaudhury'sargumentshould fall
a victim of 'false' propagandaby Companyofficials because it is plainly meant
as a root-and-branchdenunciationof colonialism, and fits into a venerablehis-
toriographical traditionreachingbackto AlexanderDow's firstHistoryof Hindostan,
which critiqued the rapacity of the Company, and DadhabhaiNaoroji's Un-
British India, which signalled the beginnings of the Indian nationaliststruggle
against British rule. It would be difficultto deny the realities of colonial dom-
ination in the nineteenthcentury:of the subordinationand exploitationof an
'Indian' by a 'British' economy. Equally, by this era, the categories 'Indian'
and 'British' were clearly definedand sharplyjuxtaposedin almost every walk
of social life. However, in consideringthe eighteenth century there is a dan-
ger-ever presentin historicalinterpretation-thatthe shadowof subsequentevents
will serve to obscure the natureof antecedentconditions.
Several of the key debates on this era turn, in effect, on how far the cate-
gories of nineteenth-century colonialismand nationalismcan be read back into
the events bringing the Europeans to power a hundred years earlier. Were
'Indian' and 'European' interests always juxtaposed? Did the conquest take
place through the impact of a superiorexogenous force-wholly formed and
fashioned outside South Asia-on a pristine, indigenous (and proto-national)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alam, Muzaffar. The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India. Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Alam, Muzaffar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam.The Mughal State 1526-1750. Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998.
Bayly, C.A. Rulers,Townsmenand Bazaars:North IndianSociety in theAge of BritishExpansion,
1770-1870. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Cain, P.J., and A.G. Hopkins. British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914.
London: Longmann, 1993.
Chatterjee, Kumkum. Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India: Bihar 1730-
1820. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.
Chaudhuri,K.N. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean. An Economic Historyfrom the
Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Chaudhury,Sushil. "EuropeanCompanies and the Bengal Textile Industry in the Eighteenth
Century: the Pitfalls of Applying Quantitative Techniques."Modern Asian Studies XVII/2
(1993): 321-40.
Datta, Rajat. Society, Economy and the Market: Commercializationin Rural Bengal, c. 1760-
1800. Delhi: Manohar, 2000.
Dow, Alexander, trans. The history of Hindostan. London: T. Becket and P.A. de Hondt,
1770-72.
Gommans, Jos. The Rise of the Indo-AfghanEmpire, c. 1710-80. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994.
Guha, Ranajit. A rule of propertyfor Bengal; an essay on the idea of permanent settlement.
Paris: Mouton, 1963.
Habib, Irfan. The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556-1707). Bombay: Asia Publishing
House, 1963.
Khan, Abdul Majed. The Transition in Bengal 1756-75. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1969.
Langford,Paul. A Polite and CommercialPeople: England1727-1783. Oxford:OxfordUniversity
Press, 1989.
Marshall, P.J. East India Fortunes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
-. Bengal--The British Bridgehead. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Naoroji, Dadabhai. Poverty and un-British rule in India. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co,
1901.
Prakash, Om. The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985.
-. "On Estimating the EmploymentImplicationsof EuropeanTrade for EighteenthCentury
Bengal Textile Industry-A Reply."ModernAsian Studies XVI/2 (1993): 341-56.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. London: J.M. Dent & E.P. Dutton, 1977.
Travers, T.R. "Notions of Contested Sovereignty in Bengal under British Rule, 1765-85."
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,Cambridge University, 2001.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
ISSUESIN SOUTHASIA 383