the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of

Interdisciplinary History

Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India by Stewart Gordon

Review by: Michael H. Fisher
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter, 1996), pp. 561-562
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/206094 .
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REVIEWS j 561

by Party elders and Deng. She tries-unsuccessfully I believe-to rec-

oncile this apparent inconsistency by including Deng and his colleagues
within the "selectorate" and recognizing their considerable power.
The substantive chapters of the book, which trace the course of
post-I978 industrial reforms, seem similarly ambivalent. In these chap-
ters, not only does the evidence for Shirk's assertions sometimes seem
thin, but, more fundamentally, the concepts of a broader "selectorate"
and "reciprocal accountability," though not absent, clearly recede into
the background. As reform leaders fall victim to informal, elite politics
and influential central authorities force reform compromises, the reader
is left doubting the efficacy of playing to the provinces.
In short, despite a provocative conceptual framework and many
valuable insights into China's reform, a case built on notions of a
selectorate and an elite strategy of playing to the provinces remains
unproved. Indeed, rather than seeing the unquestioned economic power
of the localities as the intended result of an elite political strategy, it
might be more useful to see it as the unintended result of a reformist
strategy that local authorities (whose power had been growing since the
I950s) captured and turned to their advantage. Provincial power derives
more from a command of economic resources than from the "rules"or
institutions of Chinese politics. Although local power may, in the future,
become formally incorporated into institutional structures, the present,
less institutionalized context for local power will surely complicate
China's reform in the years ahead.
Steven M. Goldstein
Smith College

Marathas,Marauders,and State Formationin Eighteenth-CenturyIndia. By

Stewart Gordon (Delhi, Oxford University Press, I994) 223 pp. $23.00

Much of the best historical research and writing on early modern India
has drawn on a variety of sources and methodologies in order to
understand the complexity of indigenous and colonial institutions in
their social contexts. This approach has been characteristic of the better
Asian studies programs in the United States. The volume under review
consists of most of the work of a scholar who is the product of such an
area studies program. Throughout his career, Gordon has examined a
range of related topics drawn from one ecologically and culturally
diverse area of central India-Malwa-during the eighteenth century.
He has made a contribution to Western scholarship by elucidating the
underlying conceptions found in British, Maratha, and Mughal admin-
istrative sources about this region and its peoples.
Gordon's approach in most of these articles is to survey the asser-
tions about various social groups and institutions produced by the British
during the colonial period, and, then, with the addition of indigenous

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562 MICHAEL H. FISHER

sources in Marathi or Persian, to develop his own more thoughtful

analysis. He undertakes this method with marginalized peoples (thugs
and Bhils) and established institutions (villages, forts, cities, and districts).
He further examines the process of incorporation (or lack thereof) of
this region into the larger Maratha, Mughal, and British colonial em-
pires.
This volume reprints, with virtually no changes, articles that Gor-
don has published during the last twenty-three years in some of the
leading journals and books in the field. The collection reveals Gordon's
growth as a scholar rather than displaying a body of material that is state
of the art.
Since the book focuses on one region in India during the eighteenth
century, nonspecialists may find the content limited in scope. Further-
more, Gordon has not gone so far as some of his contemporaries in
applying advanced theoretical models or supplementing his largely ad-
ministrative documentary sources with such other genres as caste histo-
ries or religious traditions, either written or oral.
Readers should note that the bibliography at the end of the book
refers only to the final chapter; for the other chapters, the footnotes
indicate the richness of his sources. Unfortunately, the volume has no
conclusion and the brief introduction does little to make explicit the
overarching themes that run through this collection, as well as the field
as a whole during the last quarter century. Even with these limitations,
however, this book reflects some of the best work about this region
during its period.
Michael H. Fisher
Oberlin College

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