Many British officers believed, in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, that the Waderos' estates were breaking up. Unable to make a living from their sprawling holdings, poorly cultivated as they were by disinterested haris, Waderos had been forced to raise money by mortgaging their property to bania moneylenders. Gradually their land passed to their creditors or was bought up by the more efficient smallholders. An anxious government acted to avert the ruin of its allies and the policy appeared to be successful. As Table 6 shows, largeholders were still well established in Sind at the end of the century. In almost all of the thirty-five taluqas for which figures are available, the proportion of land held by largeholders was either holding steady or increasing during the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth. Only seven registered a decrease of more than five percent in largeholders' share of the occupied area, while twenty-three showed increases of over five percent - including three with increases over one hundred percent. Nevertheless, the government remained nervous. As late as 1908, a Bombay report expressed apprehension that the demise of the Waderos had been postponed, not averted.2 In the event, the Waderos of Sind continue to flourish at the end of the twentieth century despite successive Pakistani land reforms. Their .resilience in the face of deliberate political attack leads one to approach tales of their travails under the British with some scepticism. Yet, surprisingly, the nineteenth century controversy also arose out of early attempts at land reform. The failure of these attempts, and the change in political direction they provoked, illustrate the practical constraints under which the colonial government operated, while raising critical questions about the scope for reform in contemporary Sind.