12-07-2004, 08:55 AM
The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in
South India, 1720-1800
by Dr. Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College
In a challenge to the widespread belief that poverty and poor living
standards have been characteristic of India for centuries, Dr.
Prasannan Parthasarathi demonstrates that, until the late eighteenth
century, <b>laboring groups in South India were in a powerful position,
receiving incomes well above subsistence. </b>It was with the rise of
colonial rule that the decline in their economic fortunes was initiated.
Prof. Parthasarathi suggests that 'there is compelling evidence that
South Indian labourers had higher earnings than their British
counterparts in the eighteenth century and lived lives of greater
security.' <b>Even outcaste agricultural labourers in Madras earned more
in real terms than English farm laborers, he further suggests.</b>
Complete essay at:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...158/ai_20466711
Also by Dr. Parthasarathi:
---------------------------------------
The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in
South India 1720â1800
This book argues that, during the seventeenth and first half of the
eighteenth centuries, weavers in south India were relatively well off
compared to their European counterparts, as also were agricultural
laborers. However, during the last fifty years of the eighteenth
century (the late precolonial period), the power of the English East
India Company state greatly increased, enabling it to control these
producers with increasing effectiveness, limit their mobility, and
curtail their earnings. The outcome of this application of state power
was a decline in weaver wages and well being that preceded by several
decades the negative competitive impact of British industrialization
and full colonial rule. Consequently, argues Prasannan Parthasarathi,
contrary to recent revisionist interpretations of British colonial
rule that see it as rooted in indigenous forms, there was a dramatic
break between indigenous rule associated with "notions of just
rulership and a moral polity" (p. 130) and the company colonial state
that implemented European-style policies to discipline and fix labor.
South India, 1720-1800
by Dr. Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College
In a challenge to the widespread belief that poverty and poor living
standards have been characteristic of India for centuries, Dr.
Prasannan Parthasarathi demonstrates that, until the late eighteenth
century, <b>laboring groups in South India were in a powerful position,
receiving incomes well above subsistence. </b>It was with the rise of
colonial rule that the decline in their economic fortunes was initiated.
Prof. Parthasarathi suggests that 'there is compelling evidence that
South Indian labourers had higher earnings than their British
counterparts in the eighteenth century and lived lives of greater
security.' <b>Even outcaste agricultural labourers in Madras earned more
in real terms than English farm laborers, he further suggests.</b>
Complete essay at:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...158/ai_20466711
Also by Dr. Parthasarathi:
---------------------------------------
The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in
South India 1720â1800
This book argues that, during the seventeenth and first half of the
eighteenth centuries, weavers in south India were relatively well off
compared to their European counterparts, as also were agricultural
laborers. However, during the last fifty years of the eighteenth
century (the late precolonial period), the power of the English East
India Company state greatly increased, enabling it to control these
producers with increasing effectiveness, limit their mobility, and
curtail their earnings. The outcome of this application of state power
was a decline in weaver wages and well being that preceded by several
decades the negative competitive impact of British industrialization
and full colonial rule. Consequently, argues Prasannan Parthasarathi,
contrary to recent revisionist interpretations of British colonial
rule that see it as rooted in indigenous forms, there was a dramatic
break between indigenous rule associated with "notions of just
rulership and a moral polity" (p. 130) and the company colonial state
that implemented European-style policies to discipline and fix labor.