For: AHA Guide to Historical Literature.

By: David Ludden (a draft from the early 1990s) -- see also Agricultural Production and Indian History

Bibliography on South Asian Agrarian History

1. Ali, Imran. The Punjab Under Imperialism, 1885-1947. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Considering evidence on agricultural growth and development in rural Punjab, Ali concludes that underdevelopment accompanied rapid growth, because of the concentration of benefits in the hands of a privileged Punjabi military elite. Important in part because of its implications for modern Pakistan.

2. Amin, Shahid. Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur: An Inquiry into Peasant Production for Capitalist Enterprise in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. The only monograph on sugar production as a social process in north India. Focuses on of power in social relations in commodity production. Essential for studies of commercialization in colonial India.

3. Arnold, David. "Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action: Madras, 1876-8." in Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History, 62-115. ed. Ranajit Guha. Delhi: 1984. The best account of a famine in colonial India as reconstructed to represent the perspective of rural people. Excellent anecdotal data on and from folklore sources.

4. Baden Powell, Henry. Land Systems of British India. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972. An monumental codification of land tenure systems as legal forms institutionalized in British India and explained in evolutionary terms.Basic for studies of land tenure and a perfect example of colonial discourse producing scientific justifications for its own political and legal products.

5. Bajpai, Gita. Agrarian Urban Economy and social change: the socio-economic profile of select districts in Gujarat, 1850-1900. Delhi: Daya Publishing. Adds good data but no argument to reconsideration of what constitutes "agrarian" in a highly urbanized and commercial economy of western India. Presents the kind of data that will enrich future studies of politics and cultural history.

6. Baker, Christopher John. An Indian Rural Economy: 1880 - 1955 The Tamilnad Countryside. Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. The fullest monograph on the agricultural, manufacturing, commercial, credit, central place, transportation, and political components of a regional economy in South Asia during the late colonial and early national period. Generates as full an understanding of what "rural" means historically in India as we have; this necessarily includes towns and cities in the rural landscape.

7. Baker, Christopher J. and David Washbrook. South India: Political Institutions and Political Change 1880-1940. Delhi: 1975. Essays on politics in late colonial Madras Presidency. Formative contributions to what became called "The Cambridge School" of Indian political historiography. Concentrates on the local bases of nationalist politics in agrarian power relations.

8. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi Sumit Guha, Raman Mahadevan, Sakti Padhi, D. Rajasekhar, and G. N. Rao, eds. The South Indian Economy: agrarian change, industrial structure and state policy, 1914-1947. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991. Solid chapters on Andhra, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, with one chapter on tea plantations in Karnataka. No overarching argument, but the central theme is commodity production and all chapters are very substantial.

9. Blyn, G. Agricultural trends in India, 1891-1947: Output, Availability, and Productivity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966. Seminal study of agricultural price trends in relation to output and productivity. Never surpassed. Serves as a basis for all subsequent work on commercialization, peasant responsiveness to prices, and productivity effects.

10. Bose, Sugata. Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure, and Politics, 1919-1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. The most sophisticated attempt to understand a regional political economy in relation to its economic context in the British Empire. It considers regions of greater Bengal comparatively and property to argue the basis of political power shifted from property to debt relations, generating regional divergences that help to account for diverging political trends.

11. ---. Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. A New Cambridge History of India volume that extends the coverage of Bose's earlier work back to the eighteenth century and focuses more pointedly on relations between capital and labor. Excellent and concise account of capitalism in agrarian India.

12. Boyce, James. Agrarian Impasse in Bengal: institutional constraints to technological change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Historical argumentation for the dynamics of immobility and poverty in Bangladesh today. Excellent connections here between politics, social organization, inequality, and investment in development. Critical for historians of agriculture and development.

13. Breman, Jan. Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers: Rural Labour Circulation and Capitalist Production in West India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. Historically informed sociology of rural labor relations, mobility, and living conditions. Grounded in field work and archival research. A model for historical interactions with social science technique and of labor studies that will inform understandings of agrarian subcultures.

14. ---. Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Historically supported sociological reconstruction of the changing relations of agrarian production during the rise of commercial agriculture and private property rights. Provides an alternative to classic theoretical formulations by Chayanov and Lenin by focusing on power in the production process in addition to the distribution of benefits and household differentiation.

15. Caplan, Lionel. Land and social change in east Nepal: A study of Hindu-tribal relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. An ethnography of one district, focusing on relations of power surrounding land. Implies historical dynamics.

16. Catanach, I. J. Rural Credit in Western India: rural credit and the cooperative movement in the Bombay presidency, 1875-1930. Berkeley: U Cal Press, 1970. Classic account of credit problems and laws in Bombay Presidency and the rise of cooperative credit policies and societies in the part of India where they have had the greatest influence. Centers on official documents and policy formulations.

17. Charlesworth, Neil. British Rule and the Indian Economy, 1800-1914. London: Macmillan, 1982. A small monographic summary of debates about the impact of the British empire on the Indian economy. Excellent for teaching, as an introduction to the field, and for situating India in comparative context.

18. ---. Peasants and Imperial Rule: Agriculture and Agrarian Society in the Bombay Presidency, 1850-1935. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. The last monograph by a scholar who was seminal in formulating debates about the effects of imperial policies and influence on rural economy and society in Western India. Presents clear summation of the debates and evidence.

19. Chatterjee, Partha. "Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal, 1926-1935." in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, 9-38. ed. R. Guha. NY: OUP, 1982. Argues for clear relation between systems of property power and formations of social conflict that generated the politics of antagonism between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. Presents a strong case for the primacy of material subordination and conflict in this process.

20. ---. Bengal 1920-1947: The Land Question. Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi and Co., 1984. The most important work on land reform politics in Bengal, showing its entanglement with imperial and national disputations. Connections between land and other political issues are established meticulously.

21. Chaudhuri, K. N. Economic Development of India Under the East India Company, 1814-1858: a selection of contemporary writings in Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. A collection of documents showing disputes over policy options and their intellectual bases in Britain, conflicts pertaining to the Company and its Charter renewals, and the link between policy debates and empirical evidence concerning Indian economic development. Demonstrates the foundation of development discourse in India and indicates its role in development debates concerning the modern Third World.

22. Chaudhuri, K. N. and Clive J. Dewey (eds ). Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History, editors Delhi: 1979. The most useful collection of articles produced in the 1970s on the agrarian history of colonial India. Contains many classics that have been reprinted repeatedly.

23. Cooper, Adrienne. Sharecropping and Sharecroppers' Struggles in Bengal 1930-1950. Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi & Company, 1988. A descriptive account of sharecropping and struggles involving tenants, most importantly the Tebhaga movement. Proceeds from premise that revolts are resistance to dependency.

24. Desai, A. R. (editor). Peasant Struggles in India. Delhi: OUP, 1979. Valuable source book of essays documenting the vast array of conflicts involving farmers, tenants, landowners, tribals, and the state in British India and since independence. Fundamental for understanding the intellectual and empirical basis of Subaltern Studies and related historiographic trends. Contains material on every region.

25. Dhanagare, D. N. Peasant Movements in India, 1920-1950. Delhi: 1983. A monograph that puts peasant uprisings at the heart of Indian politics in the late colonial and early nationalist period. Valuable primarily for its vast listing of movements and references to documents and secondary work.

26. Divekar, V. D. Annotated bibliography on the economic history of India (1500 A.D. to 1947 A.D.). 1977. The annotations are skimpy, but this bibliography is valuable for gathering citations on a great many subjects, including economic aspects of agrarian history. Its inclusion of pre- colonial material is useful. But it is very out of date, as work has accumulated quickly in the last two decades. Useful for older research and official documents.

27. Dyson, Tim ed ). India's Historical Demography: Studies in Famine, Disease, and Society. Westwood, MA: Riverdale, 1989. An excellent collection that includes several articles of critical importance for agrarian social and economic history. Aggregate, large scale studies are complemented with regional studies. Old issues surrounding famine causation are displaced here by newer concerns for the social impact of famine, seasonal mortality, and interactions between inequality, disease, and life expectancy.

28. Epstein, S. J. M. The Earthy Soil: Bombay Peasants and the Indian Nationalist Movement, 1919-1947. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. A clearly argued, small monograph that presents a new view of agrarian politics at work in the nationalist movement. Demonstrates that rural interests were mobilized against colonialism in direct proportion to their involvement with the commercial economy and the economic benefits of commercialization. Shows the extent to which opposition to taxes rather than opposition to British rule motivated politicized farmers who rallied behind Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.

29. Fox, Richard. From Zamindar to ballot box: community change in a north Indian market town. Ithaca: 1969. Classic study of the change in agrarian North India from a political system sustained by landlord property rights to one sustained by vote banks and electioneering. Focuses on shifting power relations surrounding the zamindars during and after the abolition of zamindari property rights. A political anthropology grounded in historical data and argumentation.

30. ---. Kin, Clan, Raja and Rule: state-hinterland relations in pre-industrial India. Berkeley: 1971. A brilliant effort to reconstruct the changing rural power relations that resulted from varyingly successful efforts by the Mughal Sultans to control land revenue and power structures in parts of North India ruled by Rajput Rajas. Never surpassed as a heuristic for the historical political sociology of pre-British North India.

31. Frankel, Francine. India's Political Economy, 1947-1977: The Gradual Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. The best place to begin studying the politics of economic development in independent India, a work to which scholars return repeatedly for information and insight. Most useful on political struggles surrounding Jawaharlal Nehru that laid the basis for India's development regime.

32. Frykenberg, Robert Eric. Guntur District, 1788-1848: A History of Local Influence and Central Authority in South India. Oxford University Press, 1965. The seminal work on local politics in early colonial rule. Argues for a continuity of local elites across the colonial transition and documents their ability to undermine British power.

33. Frykenberg, Robert Eric ,. ed. Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1969. Excellent collection of formative work in agrarian history from the medieval to British periods. Virtually every essay in this collection, which spans the subcontinent, is critical in the historiography of each region covered by the volume. .

34. ---. Land Tenure and peasant in South Asia. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1977. Solid collection of essays on assortment of agrarian issues, focused on relations of land tenure, politics, and agrarian conditions. One of the better efforts to link specific historical studies of regions with current policy issues in rural development. .

35. Ghosha, Aruna. Agrarian Structure and Peasant Movements in Colonial and Post-Colonial India (An Annotated Bibliography). Calcutta: K.P.Bagchi and Company, 1990. Small, selective volume with basic annotation focused on land tenure struggles from the perspective of policy and peasant politics. Good representation of linkage between the land revenue and land tenure systems and peasant politics in historiography and social science literature.

36. Gough, Kathleen. Rural change in southeast India: 1950s to 1980s. Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. The summation of fieldwork in Tanjavur District, Tamil Nadu, conducted over three decades, and presented as a comparative study of agrarian sub-regions, focused on labor relations, especially on the living conditions of landless agricultural laborers. Constitutes a history of labor in an intensely cultivated rice region documented by fieldwork data. .

37. ---. Rural Society in Southeast India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. A reconstruction of the agrarian history of Tanjavur District, Tamil Nadu, from medieval times to the present, organized as a sequence of modes of production, to contextualize fieldwork by the author in the 1950s and her follow-up studies in the 1980s. Focuses on change in the production process centered on agricultural labor and on the critical role of organized labor in improving working conditions. .

38. Greenough, Paul R. Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Bengal Famine of 1943-1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. The best monographic history of deadliest famine of this century. Situates famine causation and mortality in the history of agrarian society across the colonial period. Pays special attention to a cultural explanation of mortality.

39. Guha, Amalendu. Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam, 1826-1947. New Delhi: 1977. A political history of a region dominated by frontier agricultural settlement and plantations in northeast India. Excellent demonstration of the dynamic interactions of agrarian development and power relations during the nationalist movement, with clear implications for the politics of development since independence. .

40. Guha, Ramachandra. The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. Breakthrough study of ecological politics during the colonial and national period, focused on forest policy, resource exploitation, state-sponsored development projects and resistance to them by the people who live in the forests. A formative text for the ecological history of South Asia in the modern period. .

41. Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. A basic text of the Subaltern School of Indian historiography, which seeks to theorize forms of insurgency that characterize rural India during colonialism. Expands notions presented by Eric Hobsbawm to explain why peasant rebellions did not evolve into revolutionary movements, while also explaining the logical basis of resistance to capitalist exploitation in the Indian countryside.

42. Guha, Sumit. The Agrarian Economy of the Bombay Deccan, 1818-1941. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. Statistically rich account of agricultural growth trends and its limiting forces in western India. Compares sub-regions. Critical text in debates about the dynamics of growth in a commercializing, cotton growing region that remained susceptible to famine and characterized by low rates of growth and high rural poverty. .

43. Hardgrave, Robert L. The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of a Community in Change. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. The formative history of a caste political movement in Madras Presidency. Connects the history of caste mobility and social differentiation with the emergence of reform efforts and urban caste representation in the political milieu of nationalism. This study has influenced many others.

44. Hardiman, David. The Coming of the Devi: Adivasi Assertion in Western India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. Brilliant account of local consciousness and political mobilization during the nationalist movement in Gujarat. Richly detailed account of interactions of religion, class, and politics in a specific setting.

45. ---. Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District, 1917- 1934. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981. Detailed account of regional mobilization of farmers in the Gujarat district made famous by Gandhi's Satyagraha. Contains many textual details that indicate how farmers thought about the British, the Indian National Congress, and themselves as a political force.

46. ---. Peasant resistance in India, 1858-1914. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. Excellent volume in the OUP Themes in Indian History series that compiles many of the most important articles on peasant rebellion and resistance published through the 1980s. Useful introduction indicates the unity and complexity of work on the subject.

47. Harnetty, Peter. Imperialism and Free Trade: India and Lancashire in the Mid-19th Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972. Classic study of how British trade policy, having crushed Indian textile export production, fostered the growth of commercial cotton production to supply British textile mills. Basic source on imperial economic policy. .

48. Hasan, Zoya. Dominance and Mobilisation: Rural Politics In Western Uttar Pradesh 1930- 1980. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989. Examines changes in agrarian relations and their impact on political mobilization and conflict in Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh. Goes back briefly to the nineteenth century, but it is primarily a post-1950 study. Based substantially on interviews. Excellent on Charan Singh and the politics of zamindari abolition.

49. Haynes, Douglas and Gyan Prakash (eds). Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991. Substantial collection of good essays on disparate forms of resistance in everyday social life, in rural and urban South Asia, spanning the colonial and independence periods, including history, political science, and anthropology. Draws on James Scott to unify the volume theoretically but the strength of the volume is its richness of detail and the diversity of locations discussed.

50. Henningham, Stephen. Peasant Movements in Colonial India, North Bihar, 1918-1942. ANU South Asia Monograph, series #9, 1982. Not in Penn library. Could not find in time for AHA deadline.

51. Herring, R. J. Land To the Tiller: the political economy off agrarian reorm in South Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. The best account of agrarian reform analyzed comparatively to assess prospects and accomplishments in different political climates in South Asia. Rich in detail and solid analytically. The reference point for all subsequent work on the subject.

52. Hjejle, Benedict. "Slavery and Agricultural Bondage in South India in the 19th Century." The Scandinavian Economic History Review 15, no. 1 & 2 (1967): 71-126. One of the first publications to consider in detail the history of bonded labor in South India, and colonial efforts to abolish it in favor of a labor market system organized around legally free workers. Now superseded but critical as a historiographic baseline for later work.

53. Hockings, P. E. A Bibliography for the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India, 1603-1978. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1978. A jumble of references to work of all kinds on the hill region that connects Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala, and which is the site of coffee plantations as well as of tribal agro-pastoralism. It is a region of many anthropological studies that remains ripe for more serious historical work, still very thin. .

54. Hockings, Paul. Ancient Hindu Refugees: Badaga social history, 1550-1975. New Delhi: Vikas Publishers, 1980. Traces the history off a tribal group in the Nilgiris from the time of their migration into the area to the author's fieldwork. Rich use of oral history and folklore. The most thorough historical reconstruction of its kind.

55. Irschick, Eugene F. Politics and Social Conflict in South India: the non-Brahman movement and Tamil separatism, 1916-1929. Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1969. The first study of regional nationalism in South India, based primarily on the writing of Tamil nationalist leaders and focused on their efforts to mobilize against Brahman domination of native political life in the Madras Presidency. Now superceded, this remains a point of departure for any study of the subject. .

56. Islam, Sirajul. Bengal land tenure: the origin and growth of intermediate interests in the nineteenth century. Rotterdam: Comparative Asian Studies Program, 1988. Definitive account of legal basis for the rise of tenures between zamindars and cultivators in Bengal Presidency, important because of the role such intermediaries have played in accounts of modern agrarian politics in the region. Clarifies the documentary basis for regional comparisons from local records as well as the legal process of land tenure reforms under the colonial regime before electoral politics.

57. Jeffrey, Robin. The Decline of Nayar Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore, 1847-1908. London: 1976. Definitive account of change in rural power structure brought by changing land and personal property law in a south Indian native state during the colonial period. Excellent treatment of local political forces interacting with state and British colonial governments. .

58. Jha, Jagdish Chandra. The Tribal Revolt in Chotanagpur, 1831-1832. Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute, 1987. The most detailed account of an event in the history of tribal rebellions, which situates it well in its agrarian setting. One of the few accounts of agrarian history in Chotanagpur.

59. Jit, N. K. The agrarian life and economy of Orissa: a survey, 1833-1897. Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1984. The only substantial work on agrarian conditions in Orissa in the nineteenth century. Useful primarily as reference.

60. Kearney, R. N. and B. Miller. Internal migration in Sri Lanka and its social consequences. Boulder: Westview, 1987. A small statistical demography that links settlement patterns and population variables to the emergence of ethnic conflict. Useful for its data.

61. Kessinger, Tom G. Vilayatpur 1848-1968: Social and Economic Change in a North Indian Village. Berkeley: UCP, 1973. Using records from a village in the Indian Punjab, Kessinger demonstrates the changing conditions of peasant family farmers and their relations with workers during the rise of commercial production and the early stages of the Green Revolution. Classic attempt to link historical method with anthropological conceptions of village society and peasant farming. .

62. Kolff, Dirk H. A. Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market of Hindustan, 1450- 1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Breakthrough study of military recruitment and migration of peasants in precolonial North India, which argues for the importance of seasonal employment in armies for peasants, for their wide spatial mobility in pursuit of army wages, and for the critical role of service to military commanders in the process of social mobility. Critical for revisionist understandings of precolonial rural society.

63. Kumar, Dharma, editor. The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume 2: c.1750-c.1970. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1983. A massive accumulation of data on trade, manufacture, demography, policies, prices, money, technological change, and development issues in colonial India. A basic text for any study of modern Indian economic history. .

64. ---. Land and Caste in South India: agricultural labour in Madras presidency in the nineteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Reprinted by Manohar Books, Delhi, 1992, with an introduction that considers relevant literature since 1965, this is the first major work on the agrarian history of Madras Presidency. It argues that no major proportional increase in the size of the landless laborer population or decline in its living conditions can be statistically demonstrated in the nineteenth century. .

65. Kumar, Ravinder. Western India in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of the Social History of Maharashtra. London: 1968. The classic study of the impact of colonial policy on rural society in Bombay presidency. Argues for the break-up of village society and shifts in rural power toward moneylenders that account for the ruptures revealed in the Deccan Riots of 1875.

66. Ludden, David. Peasant History in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. A history of agrarian society in the Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu from the ninth through the nineteenth century, focusing on regions defined by agro-technological variables and on long-term dynamics in society generated internally and externally. Stops short of considering modern politics or the origins of nationalism. .

67. ---. "Productive Power in Agriculture: A Survey of Work on the Local History of British India." In Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia, 51-100. Editors Meghnad Desai, SR Rudolph and Ashok Rudra, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. A sixteen page bibliography with a long essay surveying historical work on the local political economy of agricultural production. Does not consider local politics attached to the nationalist movement, but does include work on agricultural geography and some anthropology.

68. Metcalf, Thomas R. Land, Landlords and The British Raj: Northern India in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: UCP, 1976. Classic study of landlordism in Uttar Pradesh in the colonial period, focused on legislation, the distribution of landlord types, and on the cultural environment of landlord politics. Emphasizes the role of the zamindar class as a component of colonial stability.

69. Mines, Mattison. The Warrior Merchants: Textiles and Caste Organization Among the Kaikkolar Weavers of South India. 1983. A stunning history by an anthropologist of the most important professional weaving caste in Tamil Nadu, tracing its origins as an organized commercial group combining production, marketing, and territorial power to its central role in precolonial states. One of the exemplary efforts to connect historical research and ethnography.

70. Modern Asian Studies volume on Camb Econ Hist). A volume of essays produced for a conference in response to the publication of the Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume Two, on the modern period. Includes debates, rebuttals, and essays to represent the kind of economic history left out of the Cambridge Volume. Excellent resource.

71. Moore, Mick. The state and peasant politics in Sri Lanka. 1985. A detailed study of state development policy in Sri Lanka and its impact on agrarian politics. Essential for any study of current conflicts on the island.

72. Neale, Walter C. Economic Change in Rural India: Land Tenure and Reform in the United Provinces, 1800-1955. New Haven: 1962. Focusing on land tenure and development policies, Neale argues that their limited effectiveness in spurring economic progress derives from the non-market character of agrarian social organization in India. A classic work in debates about economic development under British rule and during the Green Revolution.

73. Ooman, T. K. From mobilization to institutionalization: the dynamics of agrarian movement in twentieth century Kerala. Bombay: Popular Prakash, 1985. Focuses on politics and policies of land reform. Useful source off information. .

74. Pandey, Gyanendra. "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh, 1919-1922." in Subaltern Studies, I, Editor Ranajit Guha. ed rpt in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pandey argues for the autonomous origins of peasant mobilization in Uttar Pradesh and its essential separation from the elitist politics of Indian nationalism. A detailed study of one region, this article focuses on the leadership, its relations with the peasantry, and its alienation from the Gandhian Congress during the first effort at Congress mass mobilization.

75. Pandian, M. S. S. The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: Nachilnadu, 1880-1939. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990. A class analysis of agricultural transformation in Kanyakumari District, a the very tip of India. Excellent detail and strong argument for comparative analysis.

76. Panikkar, K. N. Against lord and state: religion and peasant uprisings in Malabar, 1836-1921. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. In this study of Moplah Rebellions in Malabar, Panikkar provides an overview of the considerable body of literature sustained by massive documentation of this subject, and addresses the core question under debate: to what extent do religious community and class oppression explain the origin and conduct of these rebellions?

77. Patnaik, Utsa. Agrarian relations and accumulation: the `mode of production' debate in India. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1990. An erudite collection of essays on issues in the debate about the definition of modes of production in Indian agriculture. This is the best entry point into this intensely engaged and widely disputed subject. Divided into sections on capitalist and colonial modes, the volume in sum argues that India has an important place in historical theory.

78. Patnaik, Utsa and Manjari Dingwaney. Chains of servitude: bondage and slavery in India. Madras: Sangam Books, 1985. Nine essays on the history and present reality of bonded labor in India, mostly in agriculture, but also, for instance, among brick workers. Each essay is a detailed case study. The concluding essay by Dingwaney and many of the chapters argue that bonded servitude is not being alleviated and that the trend is not toward more freedom for the landless working poor in India.

79. Pouchepadass, Jacques. Planteurs et paysans dans l'Inde coloniale: l'indigo du Bihar et le mouvement Gandhien du Champaran (1917-18). 1986. Gandhi's Satyagraha among indigo workers brought their conditions into the political limelight. This is the most detailed consideration of the production system in colonial Bihar as it pertained to the politics of nationalism. .

80. Prakash, Gyan. The world of the rural labourer in colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. An collection of reprinted essays, tightly woven together by an introduction that traces the historiography of rural workers in colonial India from its beginnings to the present. Essential for any study of agricultural labor in India. .

81. Presler, Franklin. Religion Under Bureaucracy: Policy and Administration for Hindu Temples in South India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. A pathbreaking, thorough study of colonial administration of religious institutions, showing how the politics of institutional management became interwoven with the political system of Madras Presidency, and how interests rooted in temples became political actors in modern Tamil Nadu. .

82. Ray, Ratnalekha. Change in Bengal Agrarian Society, c. 1760- 1850. New Delhi: Manohar, 1979. A critical revisionist work, which first demonstrated the limits of the agrarian transformation caused by the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, in 1793, and the rise within the colonial system of intermediary agrarian powers between small-holding peasants and elite zamindars. .

83. Regmi, M. C. A study in Nepali economic history, 1768-1846. New Delhi: Manjushri Publishing, 1971. An economic description of the region and during the period as a whole, including chapters on forced labor, agrarian laws, policies, and the aftermath of the Nepal-British war. Rich source of archival references and basic data on economic conditions. .

84. Regmi, Mahesh C. An economic history of Nepal, 1846-1901. Varanasi: Nath Publishing, 1988. Economic data and description organized into chapters on fiscal, agrarian, mining, forests, trade, taxation, and state regulation. Reads like a gazetteer but contains useful data and references.

85. ---. Land tenure and taxation in Nepal. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar, 1978. A massive compendium of data on types of land use, tenures, and taxation. Primarily a reference work, but invaluable as such.

86. ---. Landownership in Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. A revised, more readable and updated version of his LAND TENURE AND TAXATION, with clear descriptions and excellent references. The best lace to begin agrarian studies of Nepal.

87. ---. Thatched huts and stucco palaces: peasants and landlords in 19th century Nepal. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1978. A summary of information on agrarian issues divided into chapters on government, taxation, the village elite, unpaid labor, community, moneylenders, and development policies. Useful for information.

88. Rothermund, Dietmar. An Economic History of India: From Pre- Colonial Times to 1986. New Delhi: Manohar, 1988. An extremely useful and sound survey of economic history touching most major themes and updating debates in many specialized fields. Especially valuable for its handling of the transition to national economic development in the context of long-term economic history. .

89. ---. Government, Landlord and Peasant in India: Agrarian Relations under British Rule, 1865-1935. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlas, 1978. The best overview of land law and agrarian legislation and their official cognition of peasant conditions in colonial India. Rich in references.

90. Schwartzberg, Joseph E. Historical Atlas of South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. The single most important reference work for the study of South Asian history. Contains plates that plot data from prehistoric times to the present. Covers all of South Asia in lavish detail, but is weak on the specifics of regional histories. Simply plotting data from this atlas provides hypotheses about agrarian history that will keep historians busy for decades.

91. Siddiqi, Majid Hayat. Agrarian Unrest in North India: The United Provinces, 1918-1922. New Delhi: Manohar and Vikas Publishing House, 1978. A classic account of peasant mobilization in the context of the early Congress effort to build a mass following. Should be read in contrast with Subaltern Studies, and especially the work of Gyan Pandey, for its treatment of relations between agrarian politicians and the Congress. .

92. Singh, K. Suresh. Birsa Munda and his movement, 1974-1901: a study of a millenarian movement in Chotanagpur. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1983. Focused on a tribal prophet, this is one of the few books on the history off Chotanagpur. Distinctive in its historiographic context for its emphatic assertion that tribals and their culture are alien to the farming peasantry.

93. Singh, K. S. Tribal movements in India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1983. A large two volume collection of work of different qualities and utility on tribal movements. Archaic but a reasonable guide to the state of the field in 1983.

94. Snell, R. A. A social and economic atlas of India. 1988. Not in Penn Library.

95. Stein, Burton. Thomas Munro: The Origins of the Colonial State and His Vision of Empire. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. The most thorough study of Munro and his career, based on private papers opened in the 1980s. Seeks to understand Munro as a political actor in a context that includes India and Britain -- and proposes that his success shaped not only Company politics but the structure of modern knowledge about rural India.

96. Stokes, Eric. The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. A collection of critically important essays in the history of agrarian North and Central India, which also includes the first critical summary of debates on "the first century of British colonial rule," and the first effort to record and stimulate "the return of the peasant to South Asian history." Demonstrates connections among political, economic, social, and intellectual history that represent agrarian history at its best.

97. Stokes, Eric T. The Peasant Armed: the Indian rebellion of 1857. Oxford: OUP, 1986. A posthumous collection of essays that focuses on rural participation, its geography, timing, and explanation. Introduction by C.A.Bayly sets the work in context, which is an long effort by Stokes to reap data from the monumental documentation of this rebellion for agrarian political and social history.

98. Stone, Ian. Canal Irrigation in British India: perspectives on technological change in a peasant society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. A detailed study of canal irrigation policies and their impact in Uttar Pradesh, North India. Argues against Elizabeth Whitcombe that the benefits of canal irrigation outweighed the damage they did. A solid contribution to continuing debates on the ecological and economic impact of large irrigation projects.

99. Stree Shakti Sanghatana. "We Were Making History": Women and the Telengana Uprising. London: Zed Books, 1989. First person accounts of women's participation in a war for independence and revolution that raged in Andhra Pradesh in the first years of Indian independence. Important because these accounts had to be recorded and reconstructed by a later generation of activists, to produce a valuable document in oral political history.

100. Suntharalingam, R. Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press for Association of Asian Studies, 1974. A nationalist account of Tamil nationalism. Full of good details on social reform movements, literature, and colonial politics. .

101. Thorner, Daniel and Alice Thorner. Land and Labour in India. Bombay: Asia, 1962. Classic essays on the political economy of development, which connect colonial and independence periods. .

102. Velupillai, C. V. Born to Labour. 1970, Not in Penn Library.

103. Walker, Anthony R. The Toda of South India: a new look. Delhi: Hindustan Publishing, 1986. The fullest ethnographic description of the tribal group in the Nilgiris made famous by earlier ethnographers and linguists. Rich in personal description and in reports of oral evidence. Contains a good effort to reconstruct the changing environment faced by the Todas since 1819.

104. Washbrook, David A. The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency, 1870-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. The first book to link the political economy of agriculture to the politics of nationalism systematically in any region of colonial India. Washbrook traces the movement of rural power from the hinterland to the capital city of Madras through political channels provided by the elaboration of the colonial state.

105. Washbrook, David. "Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India." Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 649-721. A critical article that repositions the study of legal history as a means to investigate dynamics of power in the countryside. Perhaps the most recently cited article in studies of colonial law in the last decade.

106. Washbrook, David A. "Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History, c.1720-1860." Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 1 (1988): 57-96. A survey of the field of South Asian economic and social history during the eighteenth century and the colonial transition. Argues forcefully for the need to reinterpret colonial history in light of new research on the precolonial period.

107. Whitcombe, Elizabeth. Agrarian Conditions in Northern India: the United Provinces Under British Rule, 1860-1900 (v. 1). Berkeley: UCAL, 1972. A monograph that established ground for subsequent debates on the impact of colonial policy in rural North India, which argues for the negative impact not only of land law but also of irrigation development on economic conditions in the countryside.

108. Yang, Anand A. The Limited Raj: Agrarian Relations in Colonial India, Saran District, 1793-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. A detailed study of a single zamindari landlord estate in Bihar, which traces its development as an arena for the organization of rural power, economic stagnation, and social relations. Excellent as an account of the limited role of the colonial state formulating the conditions for agrarian life in zamindar estates.

109. Zachariah, K. C. A historical study of internal migration in the Indian sub-continent, 1901-1931. London: Asia, 1965. A statistical study based on census returns, focused on inter- state and urban rural migration patterns. The basis of all subsequent work in this field.