Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History.

Octavo, brown cloth (hardcover), xxi, 256 pp. Fine in a Very Good dust jacket with edgewear and light sunning. From dust jacket: In the essays included in this volume, nine distinguished historians of India reassess what is perhaps the central problem in Indian history. The complex social and economic structure of life on the subcontinent has been confused by centuries of accretion in overlapping terminology. It has been further distroted by the persistent efforts of Western rulers and thinkers to reduce it to a Western frame of reference. Aboce all, the Western concept of land "ownership," especially when seen as a permanent and legally guaranteed holding of property by an individual, has been quite alien in Indian. An Indian has traditionally had reason to expect a "share," determined by his family and caste, of what was produced from village land; but he has had no enduring expectation that he would retain possession of the same produce or of the same piece of ground for season after season. For a person in India, security in land tenure has been more immediately political than it has been for the Westerner. Land in India has not been a possession largely insulated by law from fluctuations in status. Rather, it has been a direct reflection of that status. This book goes far toward changing some commonly held assumptions about the history of India. In a general introduction, Dr. Frykenberg points out some of the broadest aspects of relations between land control and social structure. His observations are followed by a theoretical essay which specifically examines the meaning of the concept of "land" and then relates that concept to an Indian milieu. Also included are essays on more limited topics, time spans, and local areas; the zamindars under the Mughals; the disruption of land holding under the British; the fate of the "dispossessed"; the transformation of local rajas into landlords in Oudh; the actual operation of the Permanent Settlement within a district of East Bengal; the integration of agrarian life in South India over several centuries; the development of the Ryotwari System in the Madras Presidency; and, finally, the endurance and tenacity of village influence within South India during the nineteenth century. Asian History, Indian History, India, British History, Sociology bslic.…