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- Title
Peasants' choices? Indian agriculture and the limits of commercialization in nineteenth-century Bihar.
- Authors
Robbins, Peter
- Abstract
The article discusses agriculture decision making in one part of India, in Bihar, which was socio-economically backward yet deeply involved in commercial production during the nineteenth century. The combination of allegedly discordant characteristics is usually attributed to 'forced commercialization', the presumption being that the norm is free entry into the market. The term does not disturb the sway of most economic theories, which assume that capitalism was exported, and closed systems were opened out, as international trade expanded--a model which fits poorly with an agricultural system, previously but still incompletely market-involved, as in much of India. So-called commercialization differs case by case, therefore, because modes of production evolve within specific cultural and technical parameters. The findings of this paper modify some of the more sweeping interpretations of capitalism and of development. First, they contradict the idea that poorer, less commercial areas took little part in commerce and experienced little occupational diversity, and the opposite idea that commercialization necessarily implies economic advance. Scholars are understandably uncertain about classes in rural Bihar. Clearly, by the early 1800s or even earlier, some local producers already experienced competition from imported commodities, others suffered from a paucity of local demand when so many goods and services were exchanged through credit transactions, reflecting social prestige or in accordance with village custom.
- Subjects
BIHAR (India); INDIA; AGRICULTURE; COMMERCIALIZATION; RURAL industries; COMMERCIAL products; ECONOMIC structure; CAPITALISM
- Publication
Economic History Review, 1992, Vol 45, Issue 1, p97
- ISSN
0013-0117
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2598330