Credit, Markets and the Agrarian Economy of Colonial India (Oxford in India Readings) Hardcover - 1994

From the rear cover

This volume focuses on a theme which has been central to all discussions on the colonial economy. For nineteenth-century British officials, peasant indebtedness was a cause of worry: it was a sign of poverty and a likely reason for the lack of dynamism in agriculture. Behind all peasant revolts officials saw a long history of inherited debts, the machinations of usurers, and consequent land alienations. In nationalist discourse, indebtedness was evidence of peasant impoverishment caused by high levels of state revenue demand. Twentieth-century British officials inverted the poverty thesis: it was not poverty but prosperity - the increased power to borrow - that led to the accumulating volume of debt. Discussions on rural credit have now moved away from the simple issue of poverty and prosperity. The focus is currently on a range of other questions. Why did peasants borrow? How does credit intrude into peasant life? How do we characterize the relationship between peasants and usurers? How do debtors perceive their creditors? Some historians have looked at the different forms of credit: at networks through which peasants were both financed and subordinated. Others have located the working of rural credit within the logic of the production system. Still others have explored the cultural order: the relations of debt and bondage, and the ways in which the oppressed deify and resist the oppressor. The essays in this volume reflect these proliferating horizons among historians of rural credit.