Urban is as Urban Does:
The Tirunelveli Kattabomman District c. 1823[1]
David
Ludden
11/17/2004
Though
arguments about
Measuring
Urbanism
Around
1800, data appear that permit a closer look at the composition of economic
activity and population in
The
Dehazada and Census of the
Data
in the Tinnevelly dehazada permit us to assess the scale, composition, and
spatial organization of the non-agricultural economy, and to describe the
character of pre-modern urbanism in southern Tamil Nadu. Toward this end, I compiled indexes that
measure degree to which forty‑three dehazada items indicating
non-agricultural assets and activities are concentrated in census sites
compared to population and farm acreage. An index value of 1.00 for total
looms, for instance, means that the percentage of the sample total of looms in
a census village is the same as that village's percentage of total farmland
(Index A) or total population (Index B)
in the sample. For each census village,
the simple average of index item values yields a non‑agricultural
activity index. High index values,
well above the sample average, indicate
that a census village contains a high
proportion of artisan and/or commercial activity; for simplicity, we can say
that this means it is more "urban" in economic terms. Low index values for a village render it more
rural: this means in practice that it contained few taxable assets other than
land counted in the 1823 Census.
It
is traditional to consider larger centers of population to be more urban, but
for the premodern period this is not viable, because the area within which
these populations are contained is not specified, so their economic activity
could thus be primarily agricultural and spread over a large territory. To designate a site an urban center, we would
want it to have relatively high population density, high proportions of
non-agricultural economic activity, and high total population. In the 1823 Tinnevelly census (as in other
similar sources) the size of a census site (called a "village" but
often composed of many settlements) was determined by the state revenue
politics. Larger places with larger
populations were often simply larger areas of revenue authority, under the
command of higher ranking officials.
Smaller
sites, indeed, tend overall to be slightly more urban as measured by indexes of
economic activity. Huge villages average
lower than the sample average for indexes A (0.94) and B (0.76); small villages
average slightly higher (A=1.05; B=1.38).
Smaller sites often also have much higher population densities. After all, when a small place became
sufficiently wealthy, it could become a separate revenue unit, and such units
proliferated over time in fertile agrarian regions like
Similarly,
many tiny and relatively isolated villages in foothills and plains may have been
break‑away settlements in which
farmers claimed highly productive land and upstream irrigation
waters. Thus though in the dry plains
tiny villages were often very poorly
endowed with taxed assets other than land, some of the smallest census
sites had high concentrations of looms, mat frames, gunny frames, toddy shops,
arrack shops, and other commercial assets, in addition to artisan and merchant
castes.
Table
1 combines population size with Index A and gives a reasonable sense of
urbanity in our sample. A quarter of the
sample population lived in places with relatively high proportions of non‑agricultural
assets: urban centers, towns, and suburbs.
If we omit all these more urban areas from the sample, we still see a
gradient from higher to lower village concentrations of non‑agricultural
assets among the remaining 115 census villages.
The resulting picture is thus not
one of sharp disjuncture between urban and rural locations, but rather of a gradual slope from
higher to lower index values, from more urban to more rural census villages,
with some extreme cases at both ends.
================================================================
Table 1:
Economic Differentiation in Four Tirunelveli Taluks, 1823[4]
(Percentages are of Sample Total)
Census Economic Population Per
Locality Types Villages Population
Index 100 Farm Acres
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
N %
Average % Average
Total Wet
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
I. Urban Areas 36
22 2,253 34
5.87 116 229
Large Centers 6 4
4,813 17 4.28
101 280
Major Towns 15 9
1,492 13 4.52
103 193
Urban Suburbs 15 9
454 4 8.81
145 214
II.
Small Towns 8 5
427 2 2.32
63 158
III. Rural Areas 115
72 1,492 62
.73 24 121
Large 16 10
2,633 25 .78
23 152
Midsize 22 14
1,446 19 .69
20 123
Small 77 48
398 18 .72
30 57
================================================================
Irrigation
highlights the long history of agricultural development that underlay
urbanization. On average, urban sites
altogether have 3.54 times more of the sample area's irrigated land than of its
total farmland. Small towns have a
similar ratio (3.18), but rural sites have ratios down from 2.42 to 0.04. The low proportion (3%) of uncultivated wet
land (tarisu) in urban centers indicates the intense utilization of wet
land in urban areas. Wells also
concentrated in urban settlements. So it
is clear that urban sites of manufacturing and trade grew in proportion to
local water, paddy, and food.
Statistically,
however, irrigated arable acreage is not a good predictor of economic
urbanism. Large urban centers have lower
proportions of wet land in their borders than big towns. Many trade and manufacturing assets lie in
localities with little irrigation. Many
small villages contain large irrigated tracts but few trade and manufacturing
assets. Irrigated places in 1823 were rural and urban; they could be either
small agricultural villages or major trade and manufacturing centers. Spreading water on the land did not suffice
to make it a center of manufacturing and trade.
Economic
urbanization depended on extensive economic relations with many localities in
networks of trade and power. Five of the
six large urban centers in our sample lay in the medieval core political
The
political partitioning of south
The
urban growth of trade and manufacturing affected many aspects of local
life. Urban sites held about one third
of the sample population. They had much
higher population densities and quite different caste compositions than small
towns and rural census villages. Table 2
indicates, however, that only one set of manufacturing assets concentrated very
dramatically in urban centers, gunny frames.
This reflects the fact that major urban centers contained a high
proportion of high‑cost production for long‑distance trade. They held 70% of all silk looms and 78% of
all Kaikkolar looms. 94% of all silk
looms were in major urban centers and big towns together.
By
contrast, major urban centers and big towns, with 30% of the sample population,
only had 64% of all taxed looms, 46% of the silver shops and 61% of the brazier
shops. Urban sites had significant
concentrations of trade and manufacturing assets, but the production system --
and textile production in particular -- involved the combination of activities
and assets that were dispersed throughout networks in which urban centers were
nodes of accumulation and exchange. It
is reasonable to assume that assets accounted for in the 1823 census were
commercially active and therefore taxed -- they constitute a set of assets
registered at the intersection of the commercial economy and the state taxation
system. Some of these assets (and their
associated production activities) were distinctly rural: only 38% of all carts
and Muslim looms in the sample, and only 11% of Shanar looms and 20% of Pallar
looms were registered in urban sites.
The
activities of textile production -- cotton growing, cleaning, spinning,
weaving, dyeing, packing, transport, and finance -- were spread throughout the
central place hierarchy. Weaving was
concentrated in the 21 of 159 census villages which had a higher share of
sample's total number of taxed looms than of its population. These twenty-one weaving centers include all
six major urban centers, three big towns and two small suburbs, but also one
small town and five small villages. Even
small rural localities sustained commercial weaving, in part from local demand
and in part from trade along the urban‑rural continuum that connected
villages to long‑distance trade.
Concentrations of Muslim and Kaikkolar weavers of high-quality cloth
appear in five small villages.[32]
Moreover, tiny hamlets -- which altogether account for a little more of
the sample population (18%) than major urban centers (17%) -- contain many more
of some types of taxed commercial assets: oil mills (28 to 12), betel gardens
(45 to 4), betel bazaars (26 to 5), carpenter's yards (67 to 32), potters works
(66 to 25), periodic festivals (105 to 68) and bazaars (141 to 118), not to
mention milk cows and buffaloes, plows, bullocks, and commercial trees
(coconut, supari, jack, mango, tamarind, and palmyra).
Because
commercial and manufacturing activities were spread across the urban‑rural
continuum, urban and rural localities were not distinguished by the presence of
taxable commercial and manufacturing assets, but rather by the scale of
accumulation and by the preponderance of farming assets in their boundaries. No part of the region -- even the most rural
areas -- lay outside the commercial economy. Even the smallest rural villages
were differentiated from one another in their economic character by their
position in regional networks of economic specialization.
Compare
Pattamadai, with 552 residents in the Tambraparni valley, two miles from
Seranmahadevi (taluk headquarters), and Karisattan, with 450 residents in the
dry land seven miles from Shankarankoil.
At first sight, Pattamadai would seem to be the more commercially
active: it has 98 water works, 47 religious buildings, a major annual festival,
14 periodic festivals, a customs station, 17 terraced houses, and 41 merchant
houses, all sustained by trade along on the active road between Tirunelveli town
and Shermadevi, and by the 21% of its total arable acreage irrigated from the
Tambraparni. Yet this village and its 81
Mirasidars seem to have lived by working the transit trade, farms, and trees
alone; for virtually no manufacturing assets appear in its census record, the
exception being a sugar mill; and in addition to irrigated land, it boasted
22,732 taxable trees, mostly palmyras.
================================================================
Table 2: Ranked Average Indexes of Concentration for Village
Economic
Index Items,
by Locality Groups
Average Index
Value
Rank Item Urban Small
Rural
Areas Towns Areas
1 Gunny Frames 24.74
.00 .04
2 Toddy Shops 14.72
.34 .18
3 Arrack Shops 14.06
.91 .22
4 Brazier Shop 9.67
3.68 .29
5 Carts 8.60 3.43
.77
6 Asses 8.32 1.81
.72
7 Annual Festivals 7.60
3.34 .45
8 Terraced Houses 7.52
2.41 .91
9 Muslim Looms 7.39
.00 .49
10
Kaikkolar Looms 7.16 3.67
.26
11 Total Looms 6.83
2.32 .40
12 Sugar Mills 6.60
2.07 .62
13 Beetle Bazaars 6.51
5.65 .80
14 Goats 6.35 .41
.80
15 Silversmith Shop 6.30
2.30 .62
16 Bleaching Places 6.23
.55 .86
17 Pallar Looms 6.19
2.19 .63
18 Jack Trees 6.06
4.53 .62
19 Shanar Looms 5.76
3.62 .77
20 Public Buildings 5.57
4.17 .79
21 Silk Looms 5.54 .00
.14
22 Potter Works 5.30
4.21 .80
23
Horses 4.92 .98
.80
24 Coconut Trees 4.89
2.78 .86
25 Lime Kilns 4.79 .00
.88
26 Razor Cases 4.76
3.10 76
27 Total Population 4.65
2.32 1.01
28 Bazaars 4.63 1.54
2.16
29 Houses 4.58 2.45
.97
30 Periodic Festivals 4.51
3.86 2.13
31 Religious Buildings 4.12
2.86 .99
================================================================
By
contrast, only 8% of arable in Karisattan was irrigated. It had only 556
taxable trees and was clearly not a market center, though it did have three
periodic festivals, one bazaar, one betel bazaar, one arrack shop, and two
merchant houses. But Karisattan had one iron forge, thirteen
Kaikkolar looms, one carpenter's yard, two potters works, and two bleaching
places for cloth; and it had one milk cow for every two inhabitants (compared
one for every eight in Pattamadai) and 600 sheep and goats (compared to none in
Pattamadai). The people in Karisattan
clearly produced a lot to sell.
Who
the people were in these two villages helps to explain their economic
differences. In Pattamadai, a Pandya
Vellala stronghold, all but two mirasidars appear as non‑residents. Pandya Vellalas were 21% of the population;
Pallars and Pariahs together were 50%; both being about twice the average
percentage for sample villages, which is typical for a Tambraparni
village. Pattamadai's abundant palmyras
were surely tended by its large Shanar population (at 18%, about twice the
census village average). No Pandya Vellalas
lived in Karisattan, but instead, a small group of Chola and Tulu Vellalas. The untouchable castes amount to only 17% of
its population, well under the sample census village average (24%). Most resident Karisattan jatis had
histories of migration ‑‑ Kaikkolars, Chetties, Reddiyars,
Totiyars, and Maravas ‑‑ and along with the immigrant Vellalas,
they constituted 60% of the village.
Karisattan's bleaching places were obviously worked by its large group
of resident washermen (at 4%, four times the sample average). Its population of Kaikkolar weavers (16%) is
eight times the sample census village average.
Creating
Urbanism
In
Pattamadai and Karisattan, we see two localities with different social and
economic profiles, one at the ancient core of the region and the other on its periphery,
built as production environments by distinctive caste clusters. Pattamadai and Karisattan typify the pattern
of production localities in Tirunelveli recorded in the 1823 census: local
caste clusters reflect distinctive social formations of economic
organization. These arose historically
because family decisions to move and settle in particular places distributed
labour and capital among places within networks of human mobility, trade and
power. The historical combination of
specialized caste migration and settlement strategies, the spatial clustering
of castes endowed with complementary assets, the availability of ritual and
social techniques for organizing power among caste groups, and ready communication
along the urban-rural continuum made the early-modern economy responsive to its
world market environment.
Family
strategies and the formation of caste clusters are clearly visible in census
data, which describe jatis of many different kinds. Important economic differences among castes
appear in their spatial distributions, which can be taken (very roughly) to
represent aggregate family preferences and the outcome of residential
settlement strategies. Some castes
formed large populations, embraced many occupational distinctions, and spread
across the entire region, all along the urban‑rural continuum.
Other
populous jatis concentrated only in one region or at one end of the
urban-rural spectrum. For instance,
Vellalas and Brahmans -- who together dominated the political economy of the
Tambraparni valley, where they had a much bigger demographic share than
elsewhere -- demonstrate different residential preferences. Brahmans lived much more often in urban
sites; and among Brahmans, Smarta Telugus (who migrated into the region in post‑medieval
centuries) had a much stronger tendency to live in more urban sites than Smarta
Tamils or Sri Vaishnavas. On the other
hand, (native) Pandya Vellalas spread over the entire region in exactly the
same pattern as the population generally; as did the immigrant Tondaimandala
Mudalis; whereas immigrant Karaikkattu Vellalas were split between very rural
and strong urban preferences, and Chola and Tulu Vellalas much preferred
hamlets like Karisattan.
Other
large jatis that migrated into the region were split on similar
lines. Among Maravas, the
Kondaiyankottais and Kotalis favored rural and urban settings, respectively,
which in effect meant that relatively few members of the much larger
Kondaiyankottai group lived in Zamindar (formerly Poligar) fort towns:
Uttumalai, Surandai, and Chokkampatti.
Shanars had very strong rural preferences. Pallars (the largest landless labour caste)
settled in the same spatial pattern as did the population as a whole, but
eschewed urban centers, which suggests a distinct caste profile for urban
labour. The smaller landless labouring jati,
Pariahs, show a stronger tendency to live in urban sites, which often have high
Pariah percentages -- for instance,
Seranmahadevi (16%) and Ambasamudram (8%) -- suggesting that Pariahs
played more active roles than Pallars in manufacturing.
Small,
specialized caste groups, which comprise about half the total sample
population, show the most marked urban and rural preferences. This is critical for understanding the role
of caste in the early-modern economy.
For it seems that there were social mechanisms for fissioning and
inventing castes that produced countless small, specialized groups. Most very small castes in the census do not
appear on all four taluks census tables that comprise our sample, and they can
thus be presumed to have been significant only in small areas or localities, at
least in official perceptions.
The
number of castes in major urban centers is much smaller, proportionately, than
the total number of people counted in urban centers; and a significantly higher
percentage of all castes than of population appear to have lived in small rural
villages. This indicates that a great
many very small jati groups lived only in small rural settlements. A few tiny castes that demonstrate strong
rural preferences do appear on our list: Vyravers, Chola and Tulu Vellalas, and
Chucklers. But most small jatis
in my listing are in urban settlements: non‑Brahman temple specialists
("the religious establishment"), Karaikkattu Vellalas, Chetties,
Patnulkaran and Pattashalaiyan silk weavers, Kaikkolars, Chalupans,
Cudashelkarans, Panans, Dyers, Pattulu Muslims, Pariah Christians, and
Cunniyans. Small castes were much more
likely to be enumerated if they were seen by state officials as significant for
urban society, the political core of the state and economy. Large urban centers were composed
disproportionately of small, specialized caste groups involved in state
politics, trade and manufacturing.
The
census figures give a glimpse of the complex and moving social world of
residential decisions that defined locality units of production. In rural areas, the major dominant castes
(Vellalas, Maravas, and Brahmans) and the major landless labourer caste
(Pallars) usually comprise the majority of the population. But concentrations of artisans (weavers,
potters, Panchalars), merchants (Chetties, Villay Jedians), and subordinate
farming castes (Shanar, Pariah, and omitted jatis) are common. If we analyze the caste composition of census
villages, starting at the rural end of the economic continuum, and moving
toward major urban centers, we see more and more frequent local concentrations
of jatis that we would expect to relocate readily into locations of
market opportunity; and we also see higher numbers of these castes in census
village populations. But this is a
gradual progression, like the rising slope of manufacturing assets up the
urban-rural continuum. For opportunities
in trade and manufacture were also concentrated in small rural settlements,
like Karisattan, with its cluster of Kaikkolars and washermen, working in the
textile industry.
A
dry urban suburb, Vagaikulam (population 837), just south of Brahmadesam, had
the highest village percentage of Panchalar artisans (17%) in our sample, a
high concentration of brass works, and many Shanar looms, lime kilns, and
betel bazaars. A small rural village,
Pottalpudur (population 504), six miles northwest of Brahmadesam, had the next
highest percent Panchalar population (12%), with concentrations of mat and
gunny frames and oil mills. The highest
village proportion of Chalupens also appears in two urban suburbs: in one, near
Shermadevi (Vellankoil, population 294) Chalupens were 16% of the population;
in the other, six miles east (Kilachevel, population 656) they were 12%; and
both had huge numbers of gunny frames.
Decisions
by specialized caste groups to move into specialized settlements activated the
manufacturing economy, most prominently, the weaving industry. The demographic outcomes of weaver mobility
can be startling. Kaikkolars were a
majority of the population (56%) in Turtikulam Devasthanam (population 312), an
urban suburb of Uttumalai town, and prominent in the major urban centers of
Ambasamudram (33%), Shankarankoil (20%), and Tenkasi (12%). Tenkasi's many Muslim looms and 29% Muslim
population suggest that a third of its population engaged in cloth trades. A quarter of Viravanallur's 4,833 urban
population were silk weavers (Patnulkarans and Pattashalaiyans), who worked a
local concentration of silk looms.
The
weaving industry also involved regular movement among settlements. Of course, cotton, silk, dyes, looms,
bleaches, thread, gunny sacks, and cloth circulated among sites, each produced
and used in specialized places. Weavers
and loom owners also moved for work across village lines. In Tenkasi and some other Muslim weaving
centers, like Ravanasamudram (near Brahmadesam, population 489) and
Kallidaikurichi (population 4,651), the resident Muslim population would have
been sufficient to work the looms counted in those places. But where Muslim looms were most concentrated
in proportion to population, in the urban suburbs of Vellankoil and
Minakshipuram (population 996, near Tirunelveli town) there were no Muslims
resident in the census village at all.
Caste
Territory
Caste
settlement strategies produced patterns of jati residential association
that defined the social composition of production localities. In using 1823 census data to deduce the logic
behind the formation of jati clusters, I assume that if jati
populations were randomly distributed, there would be no significant
correlations between any two castes across the villages in the sample; and if
they were evenly distributed, all village caste populations would correlate
with one another and also with total population. Then I compute correlations with Pearson's
"r" measures of linear relationship, so that a maximum correlation of
1.0 between two jatis means that an increase in the population of one
caste would be matched exactly by proportionate increase in the other for 117
villages in my sample with populations greater than zero.
Looking
at the correlation data, we see that all jatis correlate significantly with
total population, so that normally all jati populations in a village
increase in some proportion to village population. Significant correlations among jatis
thus do not necessarily suggest caste residential associations that need
explaining: they may simply derive from normal associations between all jati
populations and total population. To
find indications of caste decision‑making about jati residence
that created clusters of jatis and patterns of association, we look for
non‑significant or negative correlations and also for high positive
correlations.
Looking
at Brahmans for instance, shows that they are not all alike, not even
Smartas. Only Smarta Tamils correlate
with population density, village economic types, and wet cultivation. The small population of Mudivar Tadvatis were
very prone to settle in drier areas, as reflected by their correlation with
total farm acres, a figure dominated by dry acreage; but they also settled in
dry urban areas. Brahmans correlate
pretty well with one another, but not in every case: Smarta Tamils and Smarta
Telugus emphatically do not. This would
be the result of post‑medieval partitioning of Smarta territories along
the Tambraparni River, which seems to parallels the partitioning by Telugu
Nayakas and Maravas of the dry periphery to the north. The medieval alliance of Vellalas and
Brahmans that dominated the political economy of the Tambraparni valley is
clearly visible in 1823 residential patterns, in which Smarta Tamils cluster
with Pandya Vellalas and Pallars. But
migrations in the post‑medieval period brought Smarta Telugus into the
region in political alliance and residential association with immigrant
Vellalas --Tondaimandalam Mudaliars -- whose leader, The Medai Delavoy,
encouraged allies among Vellalas and Telugu Brahmans to migrate south. In this migration, it seems that Smarta
Telugus were granted land in villages outside Smarta Tamil control, where they
remained until 1823: for none of the Vellalas are as segregated from one
another as are these two Brahman groups.
In addition, Smarta Telugus tend slightly more than Smarta Tamils to
live in urban centers and are much more positively associated with weavers and
merchants, indicating that they played a role in the rise of commercial
centers, all across the urban‑rural continuum, during post‑medieval
centuries.
Non‑correlations
between Brahmans and Maravas, Shanars, Christians, and Muslims are typical of
these latter jatis, which always tend to be relatively isolated other jatis
in their own areas of residential concentration. Marava groups do not even correlate with one
another. The only castes that correlate
with Christians are the castes that produced most of the Christian converts:
Shanars, Paravas, and Pariahs. Maravas,
Shanars, Christians, and Muslims preferred very strongly to live in their own
settlements, outside any strong local association with virtually any other
caste.
On
this evidence, several conclusions can be drawn that pertain to the social
construction of economic locations. A
medieval Tambraparni cluster of castes (Tamil Brahmans, Pandya Vellalas, and
Pallars) persisted until in irrigated farming areas until 1823, though like
other castes, Brahmans and Pandya Vellalas did settle in proportion to total
population everywhere. Post‑medieval
immigrant groups still remain clustered together in 1823, in part because they
jointly settled open land and in part because dominant castes partitioned the
landscape politically by building up their own jati clusters, in regions
under their control, as in Pudukottai.
As a result, Smarta Telugus are much more closely associated with
Tondaimandala Mudalis than with Pandya Vellalas, and not at all with Smarta
Tamils, who cluster more with Pandya Vellalas than with other Vellalas.
Commercially
and occupationally specialized jatis are often immigrants into the
region and into localities; in a sense, their mobility makes them perpetual
migrants, over the long term. All these
migrant castes are more closely associated with one another than with dominant
castes or the medieval Tambraparni cluster of castes. Although exceptions to this rule occur when a
small group like Chetties concentrated in an area dominated by Pandya Vellalas
and Smarta Tamils. Immigrant clusters
populated whole regions of migratory settlement, for clusters of castes opened
whole regions together, as the Telugus did in northern Tirunelveli. Also, since dominant political powers ‑‑
the Medai Delavoy, Madurai Nayakas, Nawab of Arcot, and English East India
Company ‑‑ migrated into the region with natural allies and
powerful patronage, we expect to see residential associations among their
allied groups, and we do. Urbanization
brought immigrant and commercially mobile jatis together into
clusters. Telugu castes, Muslims, and
Parava Christians thus have high correlation with artisan and merchant groups,
which have strong correlations with one another. Urban and rural jati populations
differed significantly in the proportion of Brahmans, non‑Brahman temple
specialists, merchant and artisan groups, and even untouchables, for Pariahs
are more prominent than Pallars in urban areas.
Numbers
in the 1823 census that represent local clusters of caste populations are
remnants of colonial accounting and traces of the social history that formed
local units of production. A small
portion of manufacturing output from these localities entered world markets,
but the internal dynamics of caste society that organized localities for
production gave the entire eastern peninsula the powers to respond to overseas
demand that made south India a world manufacturing center in the early-modern
period. Locally, caste society organized
labour and capital for production. The
mobility of caste groups and political struggles over centuries had carved up
the landscape for coherent clusters of castes organized around the exploitation
of opportunities in particular locations.
The hierarchy of caste dominance in each location was part of its
organization as a segment of the state and allowed political assets to be
translated into productive purposes.
At
the pinnacle of local society, patriarchs within dominant caste groups, like
the Medai Delavoy Mudaliars (though most men like him worked on a much smaller
scale) served a hinge role connecting localities to wider networks of economic
and political power. In this context,
specialized caste families moved over the landscape in response to
opportunities for investment and employment during the rise of demand for
regional manufactures after 1700. A politically
powerful local financier would invest to attract these specialists -- weavers
being prominent among them -- who were then integrated into local society by
established patterns of patronage and ritual participation. Localities that thrived as units of
manufacturing became stable residential settings for requisite combinations of
workers, financiers, artisans, traders, and service castes, whose output
combined with that of others in regional networks of trade. The 1823 census records a moment in that
history. Soon after, economic conditions
that sustained most of the local textile manufacturing units of south India
disappeared, and the economic adaptability of caste society faced the
domination of industrial capitalism.
Urban
Tirunelveli
Table
4 covers the whole district as depicted in the 1823 Census. It shows the percentage of the population in
urban centers with population over 5,000.
I
have added together Tirunelveli, Palayamkottai, Melapalayam, and other smaller
sites that comprise the Tirunelveli urban complex, which forms a massive urban
center at the heart of the region. This central urban complex comprise six
percent of the total census population and was four times bigger than the next
two urban complexes, surrounding Sivakasi and Srivilliputtur. The remainder of the list includes
Srivaikuntam, Alvar Tirunagari, Tenkasi, Varttiraya Iruppu,
Shankaranayanarkoil, and three Zamindari headquarter towns, Shattur, Sivagiri,
and Shapatur. This list would clearly
not comprise the list of major urban centers in the later nineteenth
century. The reason for this difference
is primarily that boundaries around political territories changed. This list represents a set of centers of
population and political influence that was of particular importance at the end
of the eighteenth century.
We
can learn a lot about what was important in the early modern economy from the
Census portrait of these centers.
1.
As a group, they were not "urban" in a modern sense at all, and in
fact most of them contained such large populations primarily because they
contained large areas of farmland within their borders. They included within them centers of dense
population, but as territories only the Tirunelveli Urban Complex, Alvar
Tirunagari, and Tenkasi look from their population densities like
"cities."
2. Though irrigated land was exceptionally
important for the creation of wealth and for state revenue in this period, it
is not so important in the definition of major centers of population and economic
power. Most of these centers are indeed
in the drier parts of the region. This
is consistent with other survey data from the same period and earlier, which
shows that drier regions of South India -- for instance in Rayalaseema,
northern Mysore, and in Coimbatore -- were becoming important centers of
economic activity, not only but significantly because of the expansion of
cotton, tobacco, and other lucrative forms of cultivation, in addition to the
expansion of weaving and other manufacturing activities.
3. These urban centers did have distinctive
agricultural characteristics, however.
The most densely populated centers also had the highest proportion of
irrigated land under cultivation. These
were places where agricultural land was used intensively. These were also places with large endowments
of agricultural assets other than land, most importantly, animals and
trees.
4. What most distinguished these centers
economically was that they were centers for the accumulation of revenues of various
kinds from their hinterlands and thus places where assets other than those
directly used in agricultural could accumulate.
The Tirunelveli Urban complex benefited more from the flow of shares of
agrarian product than other centers, but they all show significant
concentration of non-agricultural assets of various kinds -- including
religious buildings, bazaars, shops, looms, gunny and mat frames, iron forges
and blacksmiths shops, and fancy houses -- that is, tile roof, two-storey, and
terraced houses, which are counted in the Census.
5.
The non-agricultural economic activity that receives the most attention in the
history of this period is weaving, and cloth manufacturing was important in all
these centers. It is interesting to
note, however, that in proportion to other non-agricultural assets, looms are
not as numerically preponderant as we might expect, and they are most numerous
proportionately oddly enough in Shankaranayanarkoil. In the more intensely urbanized towns of
Tirunleveli, Sivakasi, and Tenkasi, building fancy houses seems to have been a
more prominent kind of work than weaving, though there were many looms in these
places; and in other towns, building and other activities related to religious
buildings of various kinds stands out. That the wealth which financed the
construction of these houses and religious buildings was primarily
agricultural, however, is well indicated by the proportion of total listed
agricultural to non-agricultural assets in these centers. Only the Tirunelveli Urban Complex, Sivakasi,
and Tenkasi stand out as places in which non-agricultural assets are of
disproportional importance in the economic profile. The cloth industry was most
prominent in the export trade, but in the profile of employment, it was much less
prominent in this region.
6.
Even so, because the weaving industry was expansive and dynamic in this period,
it is interesting to look at the composition of looms in the Census to get an
idea of how the industry worked. The
most outstanding feature in the count of looms in the Census is that each
center had a concentration of a different kind of looms.
Even
in The Tirunelveli Urban Complex, weavers of different types were concentrated
in different places with all the Silk Looms in Tirunelveli and Kaikkolar Looms
in Palayamkottai.
7. This spread, concentration, diversity, and
spatial segregation of weavers that is
visible in the Census raise the final points that I want to make about this
Early-Modern economic landscape.
a.
The composition of the population in each center was its most distinctive
characteristic. Every one of these
centers is distinctive as a social space.
To some extent, this reflects the fact that migration and settlement
patterns had partitioned the Tirunelveli region among different combinations of
social groups -- which were formed within distinctive political territories --
during the early modern period; and these centers developed at the center of
different population subregions.
So
for example, Brahmans formed as much as 23% of the population in Alvar
Tirunagari but only 1% in Sivakasi and less than 1% in all the Zamindar
headquarter towns. Even within the
Tirunelveli Urban complex, virtually all the Brahmans were settled in
Tirunelveli, whereas the weavers were concentrated in Palayamkottai and all the
Muslims in Melapalayam. Maravas are
concentrated in centers in the Marava tract.
Such distinctions could be recounted in many more details, because the
number of social groups counted in the census is so large. The number of named social groups goes down
from 75 in Srivilliputtur to 14 in Melapalayam with the average population per
group ascending from about 100 to about 300.
So that in these centers, on average, groups distinguished by name had
about 200 members, and the specific set of groups that comprise the population
of each subregion surrounding each major center consisted of about 50 groups in
different combinations.
As
we can see immediately when we compare this enumeration of the population to
later Censuses --more modern ones -- the social composition of the population
is much more complex and highly differentiated than established views of
"caste society" suggest.
Indeed, when the first really modern account of Tinnevelly District was
published in the 1870s, the author -- the Collector, Mr.Pate -- took great
pains to describe what he called "the typical caste composition of a
Tinnevelly village. Clearly, in 1823,
there was no such typical village and the social distinctions that were made
among groups were much more finally attuned to local conditions.
b. In addition to reflecting the diversity of
the populations of their subregions, urban centers were distinctive as urban
social spaces. As a group they had a
much lower percentage of Maravas and much higher proportions of Weavers and
Panchalars. The urban spaces in the
irrigated tracts had much higher percentages of Brahmans in their populations
than surrounding rural areas; and the same can be said of Paraiyars, while the
inverse is true for Shanars, who tended to live in less urbanized
settings. But the group that set these
urban spaces apart most was the Muslims.
Here as in most of India, the Muslim population was concentrated in
urban centers and their presence came in the early modern period to become a
reliable social and cultural marker of urbanism. Muslims, like other groups, lived
disproportionately in their own settlements, which are sometimes visible in the
1823 Census, which shows that Melapalayam was almost entirely occupied by its
5,000 Muslims, who lived almost nowhere else in the Tirunelveli Urban Complex.
Conclusions
(1)
Migration brought a great variety of different social groups into
specific places where they concentrated as groups.
a.
The social landscape was thus very fluid and people were moving around from
place to place with considerable frequency in search of economic
opportunities.
b.
But they strongly tended to settle in clusters of social groups that developed
effective control over subregions and localities within them.
c.
This social concentration of people with distinctive skills and employment
profiles produced an economic landscape that was highly differentiated, with
specific regions and localities concentrating on a specific range of productive
activities in landscapes that supported them and became marked by them.
(2) This produced an urban-rural
continuum in which only a few rather large urban centers stood out from a
number of smaller ones and only a few urban centers that could be said to be
centers of specifically "urban" economic activity, because most urban
centers were simply centers of accumulation and power in their hinterlands,
with concentrations of the same forms of labor that could be found in the
smaller settlements. This is the spatial
pattern typical of the pre-railway era, but the consolidation of an urban
hierarchy in which major centers stand out permanently became typical only in
the 17-18th centuries.
a. Urban economies were characterized by
concentrations of weaving, but the construction industry seems to have been
much more important, as it could be sustained by a wider range of income
streams. Religious institutions, trade
in high-value consumer goods, and the government service sector (including
finance) were also prominent non-agricultural economic activities
b. This was predominantly an agricultural
economy that supported a wide range of small investments in non-agricultural
production (as in weaving, mining, and other crafts) rather than an
industrializing economy with increasing concentrations of proletarian
labour. The great dispersion of
non-agricultural economic activities enabled the majority of the population to
be involved in some way in what would become characteristically of "urban" occupations. In consumer
goods trade, processing, and finance, the textile sector, construction,
religious institutions, and government, many wage-paying activities were
available in the everyday agrarian work environment. (These would later be concentrated in
industrial centers, lowering non-agricultural income options in farming
communities, and also income earning options in the domestic economy.)
(3)
It was an economy that was widely and deeply commercialized and filled
with people who were willing and able to take advantage of economic
opportunities within the social groups that organized their family and their
work lives simultaneously.
(4) Social space was intricately segregated and
partitioned among social groups, with their own places and forms of worship,
leaders, and sources of livelihood.
[1] MIDS Conference paper,
WINWORD version; MS-WORKS embedded tables omitted; they are available on
request from author) This is a draft for the conference on Tamil Nadu at the
Madras Institute for Development Studies, APril 2, 1996. Please do not cite or quote without author's
prior permision. Work for this paper was
supported by a grant from the American Institute for Indian Studies.
[2] The Economy of Mughal India, c.1595: A Statistical Study, Delhi,
Oxford Univesity Press, 1987, 299-321, amd Map10.
[3] For an introduction to
these data see David Ludden, "Agrarian Commercialism in Eighteenth Century
South India: Evidence from the 1823 Tirunelveli Census," Indian Economic
and Social History Review, 25, 4, 1988, 493‑519. Rpt. Merchants,
Markets and the State in Early Modern India. Editor: Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1990, 215‑241.
[4]Note: Taluks are
Tenkasi, Shankarankoil (without Zamindaris), Brahmadesam, and Shermadevi. Index values measure concentrations of 44
dehazada items (Table 2) in each village compared to farm acres. Farm acres include all revenue classifications,
including waste. "Wet" means "classified as
irrigated." Source: Tamil Nadu
Archives, Revenue Department Sundries No.39, "Census and Dehazada of the
Province of Tirunelvelie."
[See Ludden 1988, for details.]