The monograph surveys the developments within the Indian economy during the period of the high tide of colonial domination between the 1857 Rebellion and the First World War. Its various sub-chapters deal with population, gross product and prices; tribute, imperialism of Free Trade, and the construction of railways; peasant agriculture, plantations, commercialization of agriculture and its impact on rents, peasant incomes and agricultural wages; and rural de-industrialization, modern industries, tariff and exchange policies; banking and finance; and fiscal system, tax-burden and the rise of...

This collection brings together, for the first time, several seminal essays by Professor Irfan Habib interpreting the main currents in Indian history from a Marxist perspective. They cover a wide range of issues: the nature of evolution of caste through the centuries, the role played by the peasantry in Indian history, the forms of class struggle and the stage of development of the economy in Mughal India, the impact of colonialism on the Indian economy, the changes in Marx's perceptions of India, the problems of Marxist historiography. Representing three decades of scholarship, each essay in...

This book covers the whole range of technology, from the tools and skills of ordinary men and women to the instruments of astronomers and the equipage and weaponry of war. Changes in technology are carefully traced and their consequences examined. Larger questions, such as those of constraints on technological development and the role of the social and economic environment, are also addressed. This volume, in line with the others of A People's History of India, gives several extracts from texts, containing significant information about specific aspects of pre-modern technology. There are...