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Debates Over 18th Century India, Change vs. Continuity and Dark Age vs. Prosperity
Debates Over 18th Century India, Change vs. Continuity and Dark Age vs. Prosperity
Debates Over 18th Century India, Change vs. Continuity and Dark Age vs. Prosperity
Harshita
B.A. (hons.) History
IIIrd Year
0327
Daulat Ram College
I*R+D,C*I+-
!urang%eb$s death in &'(' marks the beginning of Mughal decline, but his
territorial expansions that put a huge dent on the )nancial structure
of the state are also contributing
The break-up of the Mughal *tate was followed by the emergency of large
number of independent and semi-independent smaller units These
were of three-distinct types- )rstly, the warrior states established by
*ikhs, +ats and Marathas in the course of rebellions against the
Mughals, who adopted military )scalism secondly, independent
kingdoms where subedars asserted their independence, eg
awabs of Bengal, i%ams of .yderabad and thirdly, local kingdoms
whose sovereignty ac/uired more substance in the &0thcentury, eg
the 1a2put states, Mysore etc, which resorted to military )scalism
within compact domains, achieving varying degrees of success in
extracting revenues from trade and production
Most of the revisionist work /uestioned the economic decline theory that
both imperialist and nationalist histories posed They speculated
regional variations that showed signi)cant economic growth and
with increased moneti%ation, agricultural and commercial expansion
as evidence They did not 2ust focus on the decline of the Mughal
imperial centre but on the dynamism of regional and local polities
Robert Traverstalks about how social history was pitted against cultural
history as the eighteenth century revisionists were said to be rivals
of the cultural and linguistic leaning *ubaltern studies This was
emphasi%ed upon in *outh !sian history by postcolonial theory
politics and critics The disputes started losing their edges as both
the debates settled down and it became clear that both of them had
a di4erent approach, di4erent time periods, di4erent social groups
etc These debates raise many contests such as collaboration versus
resistance, Indian agency versus colonial intervention, continuity
versus change, social history versus cultural history
versus change, social history versus cultural history
Bernard S. Cohn, one of the revisionist historian talks about the existence
and interaction of multiple 5levels of power,6 from villages and local
land controllers to kings, provincial governors and emperors
8olonialists, on the other hand, believed that the British East India
8ompany of occidental origin with its rule of law, governance model
and the 5gift6 of civili%ation were the legitimate heir to the decadent
Muslims They wanted to civili%e the barbaric, oriental despots of
east
CABRID /CH++-
The traditional views have been challenged by the 8ambridge school that
see the arrival of colonialism as a long-drawn historical process
+5R6I/I+I/*/-
Thus, we can clearly see that &0thcentury polity, economy and society are
characteri%ed by trends that re7ect both change and continuity This
debate becomes more intense and pertinent for the second half of
the &0thcentury, which saw the beginnings of British colonial
expansion in northern India and its impact on the local society and
economy .ere again, the contention is over whether &'C' marked a
decisive break with pro-colonial past, or whether, as the 1evisionists
have argued, the basis for colonialism was already present in India
and these elements were simply initiated by colonialism
DAR A 6/ 8R+/8RI*Y-