India in the Eighteenth Century

India in the Eighteenth Century

‘ The eighteenth century saw not so much the decline of the Mughal ruling elite, but its transformation and the ascent of inferior social groups to over political power’.

Christopher Bailey examines the changing degree of influence of the Nobility. This is linked to the decline in economic power, as witnessed by the breakdown of the system of assignments that was the Nobility’s instrument of subsistence. Commercial economy is said to have expanded in light of the activities of the ‘revenue farmers’. Though their households followed the pattern as laid out by the older Nobility, their relationship with the regional rulers made all the difference, as it was ‘mercenary and contractual’.

The decline of Nobility lead to a change of equation between the nobles and the traditional commercial classes. Big merchant houses lent money to rulers and nobles, and this obviously insinuates that they had a greater stake in politics.

Local gentry began to seize privileges that they were denied when the Mughal power had been strong. Prebendal lands were acquired. Propreietal rights, and conversion of non-hereditary rights over hereditary rights were some of the methods through which new players began accumulating property.

Bailey emphasizes that Commercialization is more than just the slow increase of use of money in an economy. Social relationships were beginning to be defined by use of objective monetary values.

The debate pertaining to the issue of whether the emergence of new social groups can be referred to as ‘class formation’ has been argued as follows:

Caste is not something immutable, unlike what was believed earlier. Indians of the pre-colonial period used economic power to indicate c...

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...evels of power in the society. The sub-continent economy of the towns and trade routes suffered disruption and flux after the death of Aurangzeb, but several new important centers were established in this period, for e.g. Mysore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bombay, and Madras. New overland routes emerged. Though some of the cities might have declined, urbanization as a trend was far more wide spread in the subcontinent by 1800.

The second kind of economy, the ‘intermediate economy’ of mass artisan production, small country towns also flourished. . Also, trader-bankers emerged as a powerful political group. The third economy was the India’s internal agrarian economy.

Each of these economics though heavily dependent on each other, had its own economic cycle that provides for a deeper understanding of how the political power is wielded through various instruments.