ABSTRACT
With some justification, Malabar District (now part of Kerala state) has been treated as exceptional by several southern India specialists. They exclude Malabar (and South Kanara) from their discussions in order to keep their analysis coherent. 2 Similarly those scholars whose interest lies in Malabar proper tend to discuss its history with little reference to the Presidency, taking for granted that Malabar is peculiar. One reason is that, ever since Malabar came under British rule in 1792, the Madras government recognised the ubiquitous existence there of the landowning class called janmis, in contrast to the situation in other parts of the Presidency, where the raiyats were considered tenants under the government. Accordingly the raiyatwari system introduced into Malabar differed in several respects from the one found on the east coast.
