Peasants, famine and the state in colonial western India /
[Book]
David Hall-Matthews.
1st ed.
New York :
Palgrave Macmillan,
2005.
xvii, 269 pages :
maps ;
23 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-263) and index.
1. Landholding, peasant production and rainfall -- 2. Market opportunities, risks and failures -- 3. Rural moneylending, credit legislation and peasant protest -- 4. Land revenue rigidity, revisions and non-remission -- 5. Peasants and relief labour.
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"Recent literature has suggested that famines are complex, long-drawn-out and political processes, rather than sudden, natural phenomena. This book is among the first to examine such a process in detail, by studying poor peasants in Ahmednagar district, Western India, between 1870 and 1884. It does so by investigating their factors of production - land, capital and labour - as well as markets in credit and the cheap foodgrains they produced and, above all, their relationship with the colonial state."--Jacket.