We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Fishing rights and colonial government: institutional development in the Bengal Presidency.
- Authors
Sen, Shourya; Adelstein, Richard
- Abstract
We examine the evolution of fishing rights in colonial Bengal through a series of cases heard at the Calcutta High Court in the 1880s and culminating in the passage of legislation in 1889. We posit an implicit relational contract between the colonizing British and the landowning class in colonial Bengal as a way to understand the concurrent evolution of fishing rights and institutions of governance in the region. The system of incentives created by this contract determined the development of fishing rights at a crucial moment in the history of colonial Bengal and, more broadly, became a primary mechanism of institutional change in the region. The analysis also shows the High Court to have acted, albeit in vain, as a truly independent judiciary; had its resolution of the cases prevailed, the institutional development of the region might have been substantially different than it was.
- Subjects
KOLKATA (India); FISHERY laws; FISH evolution; HISTORY of colonies; JUDICIAL independence; FISH development; FISHING
- Publication
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2021, Vol 45, Issue 2, p313
- ISSN
0309-166X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/cje/beaa053