The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720-1800

How could this be so? Parthasarathi argues that weavers were able to maintain a strong position against weavers. They could use (and abuse) advances of their goods, while merchants had trouble enforcing their debts. One might think this was odd, since usury would appear to be something that merchants would tend to be very good at. Even more important weavers and peasant society was often very mobile, and they went from princely state to princely state, using competition from kings to their own advantage. They also possessed strong village and caste organization which increased their solidarity. As for wages, although their levels were lower than Britain's, their real wages were comparable because the price of grain was so much lower in India. This in turn was not simply the result of superior Indian agriculture, but also conscious processes of agricultural investment by rulers as well as attempts to gain peripatetic laborers.

However, from the 1760s onward, the East India Company started turning things around and for the worse. They eliminated the role of the mrechants in advancing credit, allowing them to reduce prices and quantity. They monopolized the cloth trade, so weavers could not sell their product to other rivals. They also sought to strengthen their contractual positions, and enforce their debts. At the same time they possessed an expanding authority that was very different from the old Indian states. Whereas Indian rulers were often suspicious of merchants, the Company united the two realms. Moreover, whereas according to Parthasarathi rulers were reluctant to use force against local communities, the Company had no such compunctions. It could and would force wandering laborers to stay put and to get them back when they wandered away. Weavers resisted this, sometimes violently, and Parthasarathi devotes a whole chapter to weaver resistance. In contrast to earlier nationalist writers, Parthasarathi argues that merchants helped support Company, and ultimately British rule, in order to reinforce their own power. By following these methods, the company reduced the need the invest in agriculture, since there was no need to appease the weavers. The result was agricultural stagnation and decline, which dramatically undercuts the idea that Colonial rule put India on the true and only path to modernity.

There are some problems with this book. Considering that the text runs to less than 150 pages, it is absurdly overpriced. Moreover, the writing is not particularly vivid, especially the appendices. And in discussing the practice of Indian kings, Parthasarathi tends to quote their benevolent proclamations and discuss less what they actually did. There is a concentration on weavers as opposed to the overwhelming rural majority, and most of the points could have been further developed. But this is an otherwise well documented book as far as it goes, and the challenge it provides to images of Oriental despotism and Indian stagnation is well worth considering.