Landed Property, Agrarian Categories, And the Agricultural Frontier: Some Reflections on Colonial India

Colonial land policies in India might be divided into stages, rather like Basalla’s model of the transmission of Western science, with periods of learning and accommodation, colonial imposition, and postcolonial adoption, though the chronology is muddled and overlapping. ¹ The policies also reflected rival social theories. In this chapter, after an introductory outline, I wish to emphasize, instead, some continuing intrinsic features and some points of contact with surviving precolonial institutions. At first the focus will be on so-called settlements that set the land-tax and decided landownership.