ABSTRACT
The agricultural economy of colonial South Asia was marked by deficient investment and a lack of capital inputs. Stagnation, frequently punctured by famines, was thus a defining feature of most of South Asian agrarian history in the long nineteenth century and beyond. Yet, despite the apparent sluggishness of the agricultural economy, the agrarian world of South Asia was in a state of flux and underwent profound transformations. This chapter sketches these broader transformations. It is divided into three parts. It starts with a discussion of the legal and organisational interventions of the colonial state. It then turns to the question of commercialisation and the economic underpinnings of the transformation of agriculture. The chapter concludes with a discussion on peasant history and the question of political mobilisation.
