E-Books →The Formation of the Colonial State in India Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760-1860

This book offers a new way of interpreting the colonial state's origins in north India. It examines how the formation of early agrarian revenue settlements exacerbated an extant late Mughal taxation tradition, and how the success of British power was shaped by this extant paper-oriented revenue culture. It goes on to examine how the service and cultural histories of various Hindu scribal communities fit within broader changes in political administration, taxation, patterns of governance and a shared Indo-Islamic administrative culture. The author argues that British power after the late eighteenth century came as much through bureaucratic mastery, paper and taxes as it did through military force and commercial ruthlessness. The book draws upon private family papers, interviews and Persian sources to demonstrate how the fortunes of scribes changed between empires, and the important role they played at the height of the British Raj by 1900.
Offering a detailed account of how agrarian wealth provided the bedrock of the colonial state's later patterns of administration, this book is a unique and refreshing contribution to studies in South Asian History, Governance and Imperialism.