ABSTRACT
Interestingly enough, there has been a surprising concensus among historians (e.g. K.K. Datta, Brijen K. Gupta, K.N. Chaudhuri and even P.J. Marshall in his latest book in the New Cambridge History of India Series) that there was a sharp and steady rise in the prices of commodities in Bengal during the period from around the 1720s to the 1750s. This has an important bearing on the ‘Change or Continuity’ thesis in the context of the eighteenth century. If the price rise was a continuous process from the nawabi regime, then it is implied that the steep rise in prices in the 1760s, which is amply documented in the Company records and acknowledged as such even by P.J. Marshall, was nothing but a continuity of the trends prevalent in the pre-Plassey period. At the same time, this assumption minimizes the role of the Company and its servants in destroying Bengal’s economy by various monopolies, oppressions and ruthless exploitation in the post-Plassey period. In the backdrop of all this, it would be interesting to re-examine the price trends in Bengal in the pre-colonial period, and see how far the general thesis of the upward movement of prices in the first half of the eighteenth century, held so far by most of the authorities on the subject, can stand a close scrutiny in the light of the new evidence found in the European archives.
