The monograph surveys the developments within the Indian economy during the period of the high tide of colonial domination between the 1857 Rebellion and the First World War. Its various sub-chapters deal with population, gross product and prices; tribute, imperialism of Free Trade, and the construction of railways; peasant agriculture, plantations, commercialization of agriculture and its impact on rents, peasant incomes and agricultural wages; and rural de-industrialization, modern industries, tariff and exchange policies; banking and finance; and fiscal system, tax-burden and the rise of economic nationalism. There are extracts from contemporary comments and reports; technical notes on such matters as computing national income, counterfactual analysis, etc., and short bibliographies accompanying each of the five chapters.Irfan Habib, formerly Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University, is author of The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556 1707 (1963; 2nd rev. edn, 1999), An Atlas of the Mughal Empire (1982) and Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception (1995). In the People s History of India series, he has authored Prehistory (2001) and The Indus Civilization (2002), and co-authored The Vedic Age (2003) and Mauryan India (2004). He has edited Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan (1999), State and Diplomacy under Tipu Sultan (2001) and A Shared Heritage: The Growth of Civilizations in India and Iran (2002); and co-edited Sikh History from Persian Sources (2001), the Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I (1982), and UNESCO s History of Humanity, Vols IV and V, and History of Central Asia, Vol. V.

A unique examination of the development of the modern Indian economy over the past 150 years.

How colonial governments in Asia and Africa financed their activities and why fiscal systems varied across colonies reveals the nature and long-term effects of colonial rule.

Leading economic historians present a groundbreaking series of country case studies exploring the formation of fiscal states in Eurasia.

Much has been written on the Indian economy but this is the first major attempt to present India's economic history as a continuous process, and to place the development of agriculture, industry and currency in a political and historical context.

This collection of essays focuses on a period when several disparate and localized struggles occurred which are significant in revealing wider unities that existed among the peasantry. David Hardiman first traces changing trends in the way the peasantry has been viewed by historians, from the colonial era to recent times. He then emphasizes the "community" consciousness of peasants, which is then redefined within the context of their specific struggles. He thus demarcates particular areas of resistance based on specific relationships of domination and subordination, each with a distinct character and chronology. Each localized, isolated resistance is thus unified in being directed against those outside the peasant community.

This volume in the People's History of India series gives a general account of Indian economy in the first century of British rule (1757-1857). It describes the changes in Indian economy brought about by the pressure for tribute, the British land settlements, and the triumph of free trade. In order to set these changes in a proper perspective, it begins by furnishing a survey of pre-colonial economic conditions. A notable feature of the book is its reference to how aspects of Indian economy were seen and interpreted by contemporary observers. This is accomplished partly by a rich collection of extracts from the sources. There are also special notes on current interpretations of eighteenth-century history, the nature of tribute or drain of wealth from India to England, and the scope and problems of historical demography.