Peasant Labour And Colonial Capital

A critical work of synthesis and interpretation of agrarian change in India over the long term.

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Focusing primarily on the politics of jute workers in Bengal, this study explores the interaction between workers' politics, nationalist movements, and the colonial state at various levels in the period between 1890 and 1937.

A richly textured ethnography about knitwear manufacturers in South India that explains how peasant-workers have refined notions of place, gender, and class to create a local industrial form that succeeds in the global economy.

These twelve essays explore the nature of south Asian agrarian society and examine the extent to which it changed during the period of British rule. The central focus of the book is directed to peasant agitation and violence and four of the studies look at the agrarian explosion that formed the background to the 1857 Mutiny. The essays give a coherent historical treatment of the Indian peasant world, and the paperback edition of this successful book will be of interest to the student of peasant studies and to the sociologist as well as to development economists and agronomists generally.

As well as being an outstanding contribution to Indian economic and social history, this book draws important conclusions about peasant politics in general and about the effects of international economic fluctuations on primary producing countries. Dr Bose develops a general typology of systems of agrarian production in Bengal to show how these responded to different types of pressure from the world economy, and treats in detail the effects of the world Depression on Bengal. Separate chapters are devoted to the themes of agrarian conflict and religious strife in east Bengal, the agrarian dimension of mass nationalism in west Bengal and sharecroppers agitations in the frontier regions. The conclusion attempts a synthesis of the typology of agrarian social structure and the periodisation of peasant politics, placing this in the wider context of agrarian societies and protest in other parts of India and in South-east Asia.

Based on fascinating primary research in India, England, and Scotland, this book represents a new departure in the writing of imperial history. JUTE AND EMPIRE follows the intriguing story of the rivalry between Calcutta, India, and Dundee, Scotland, from the 1830s to the 1950, as these two cities competed in the world jute trade.