ABSTRACT

As export production spread beyond the European and great landlord estates, however, the threats which market involvement posed for systems of colonial control in Java and Bihar multiplied rapidly. The growing importance of social history and social anthropology which made long-neglected groups-workers, women, the elderly, peasants-the focus of their inquiry gave added importance to the study of agrarian protest. Effective checks on excessive elite demands in the pre-colonial era were largely logistical. Some colonial officials voiced concern over the disruptive effects of the rapid spread of market production. As British revenue officials freely conceded, agrarian statistics were, on the whole, little more than "absurd guesses" through most of the period of British rule. Of more immediate significance were the series of agrarian reform bills that were put into effect in India and Java in the late nineteenth century and the growing involvement of colonial officials in local affairs.