Property Aristocracy & the Raj

This book is a social and agrarian history combined into one. Its main focus is on Bengal but at times it takes other parts of India as its area of study. The period is essentially the colonial period the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when great changes took place in the social structure of the country, particularly in the countryside. With the coming of the English in power the land revenue system of the country changed. Traditional aristocrats went down and a new elite emerged. In Bengal the traditional Mughal elite was power elite represented by a Raj Ballabh or a Nanda Kumar, an Alam Chand or a Reza Khan. Trade had never been their business. They had space in the structure of governance and revenue assignment was their source of living and affluence. As the English east India Company rose to power these men sank. They were replaced by a set of base Indians who collaborated with the English in their effort to rip up the interior in search of wealth. They were not entrepreneurs but compradors who acted as the go-betweens between the in-coming ruleers and the Indian society. To these group belonged a host of new men, one Raja Nabakrishna, one Kantu Babu i.e. Krishna Kanta Nandi or Gokul Ghosal. They eventually became the founders of the new Raj. Thus Raja nabakrishna set up the Shova Bazaar Raj, Kantu Babu the Murshidabad Kandi and the Calcutta Paikpara Raj and Gokul Ghosal the Khidirpur Bhukailash Raj. This is the story of a new transformation and the whole first chapter of the book deals.