5 Rani Jijima, Soldier, Statesman, Financier: A Rajput Queen in Mid-Eighteenth Century Western India

2018 ◽  
pp. 167-193
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western India

Organizing Warfare and Diplomacy in Western India, 1778–83

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Manu Sehgal
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western India ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Critical Component ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Military

This chapter examines the origins of a distinctive system of organizing military conquest in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It seeks to de-centre the study of politics and military contestation by looking at the war against the Marathas (1778–82) from the vantage point of the region most directly affected by it—the western peninsular territory of the Bombay presidency. The advantage in shifting the focus away from the politically dominant Bengal presidency allows identification of a critical component in the political economy of conquest—the transfer of political authority from a civilian council to the commander of a military force. This shift in political power was essential to the success of the EIC regime of conquest even as it became a perennial source of conflict within the governing structures of the Company state. The debate and dissension that accompanied the deployment of military force both enabled the success of the machine of war and characterized the creation of a distinctive early colonial ideology of rule that subverted civilian control of the military.

Banias and the British: the Role of Indigenous Credit in the Process of Imperial Expansion in Western India in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
State Building ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Western India ◽  
Senior Member ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Service Groups

The pressing preoccupation of the British administration in the early decades of the nineteenth century to clip the wings of the malicious Indian shroffs (Bankers) and their manoeuvres and secret dealings was in sharp and in a sense valid contrast to their earlierperceptions of the Indian shroffs and their Hundi empire. By 1807, Mr Rickards, senior member of the Bombay establishment, was urging the Governor-General in Council to establisha General Bank whose operations would extend throughout India, facilitate remittances andcredit transfers from one part of the country to another, and above all ‘free the mercantile body from losses and inconveniences suffered in the exchange and from the artifices of shroffs’. Their ‘undue and pernicious influence over the course of trade and exchange’ could no longer be treated with forbearance, and the urgency of remedy was stressed. It was both strange and ironical that such advice should stem from a quarter where in the crucial years of political change and transition in the second half of the eighteenth century, the cooperation and intervention of the indigenous banking fraternity and their credit support had proved vital to the success of the Imperial strategy. The experience was admittedly not unique to Bombay and the English East India Company (hence-forth E.E.I.C) and in a sense the guarantee of local credit and the support of service groups for a variety of reasons, was clearly envisagedas a basic ingredient to state building in the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Role of Sufi Saints in North –Western India

IJOHMN ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Dr R. Subramony
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Northern India ◽  
North Western ◽  
Cultural Structure

The eighteenth century in Indian History is characterized as an epoch of political anarchy and social chaos that spread unchecked in the wake of the collapse of the Mughal empire. But disintegration of the imperial center and its administrative institutions did not produce any profound effect on the pre-existing pluralistic socio-cultural structure, which was distinguished by widespread Hindu-Muslim unity and culture syncretism in northern India.

From Crisis to Community Definition: The Dynamics of Eighteenth-Century Parsi Philanthropy

1991 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. White
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Cotton Textile ◽  
Indian Industry ◽  
Textile Industries ◽  
Community Definition

India's Parsis as a group have long been noted for their entrepreneurial talent. Parsis have played an important role in the growth of Indian industry in the nineteenth century, pioneering cotton textile industries in western India. Parsis were first described by early European visitors like J. Ovington as the principal weavers of Gujarat who worked primarily in ‘silks and stuffs’. In the late seventeenth century, Parsis began to participate in trade as ‘a large number of Parsi merchants began to operate in Swally and some of them like Asa Vora bought pinnaces (small coastal ships) to transport their goods to Basra and other ports in the area.’

In the Presence of Witnesses: Petitioning and judicial ‘publics’ in western India, circa 1600–1820

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSALIND O'HANLON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Level ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Western India ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
Principles Of Justice

AbstractBritish observers of the nineteenth-century panchayat were convinced that it represented a judicial forum of great antiquity, in which petitioners were able to gain local and direct access to justice. They contrasted the panchayat favourably with the delays and frustrations that beset the eighteenth-century East India Company's attempts to channel all petitions through its own courts. This article examines the history of the pre-colonial panchayat in western India and its early modern predecessors. During the early modern centuries, a diverse array of state-level and local corporate bodies made up the landscape for the submission of petitions and the hearing of suits. Although many suits were local in nature, the process of hearing and adjudication itself gave these judicial spaces a significant ‘public’ dimension, and their forms of argumentation frequently invoked general principles of justice and moral order. From the early eighteenth century, the new form of the panchayat came to supersede these older corporate bodies and to reshape the forms of public that gathered around them. The Maratha state, based in Pune, sought firmer control over revenue and justice. State officials promoted the panchayat as a new type of judicial arena, weakening the local corporate institutions and tying them more closely to the Pune court.

The Emergence of an Indigenous Business Class in Maharashtra in the Eighteenth Century

1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. D. Divekar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Subject

The present paper is divided into three parts. Part I describes and analyses the emergence of an indigenous business class in Maharashtra, in western India, during the Peshwa times, and its position under early British rule. Part II discusses the dominance of Brahman savakars in the newly emerged business class. Part III presents an overview and states general observations relating to the subject.

The scribal household in flux: Pathways of Kayastha service in eighteenth-century Western India

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-566
Author(s):  
Dominic Vendell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Western India ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

Scribes in early modern South Asia relied on their skill in writing to secure the support of powerful courtly patrons. The rapid expansion of emerging regional states in the eighteenth century created new opportunities to apply these skills to administration, land-holding, and politics. This article examines the changing professional identity of the Kayastha scribal household in eighteenth-century western India. I focus on the ascendancy of the Chitnis household of Satara in the context of the growth and diversification of Kayastha employment under the Maratha sovereign Shahu Bhonsle (1682–1749). By consolidating portfolios of titles, appointments, and rights to property, ambitious scribes and secretaries, as epitomised by the career of Govind Khanderao Chitnis (d. 1785), were able to pursue riskier and more lucrative political assignments and form networks of kinsmen and associates across Maratha governments. Yet greater scrutiny and competition for state largesse, not least from within the Chitnis household itself, forced members of later generations to adopt creative and sometimes risky strategies to defend their claims to property. This article explores how the profound dislocations of political transformation in eighteenth-century South Asia enabled distinctive modes of individual and collective self-fashioning amongst skilled, upwardly mobile groups.

The Company State at War

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-198
Author(s):  
Manu Sehgal
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Shifting Boundaries

This chapter brings together the distinct constituents of the early colonial order that had been created over the preceding three decades to execute conquest. The final conflict with the Marathas (1803–5) required much more than troops and an unprecedented commitment of financial resources. Disputes between civilian administrators and military officers, between legally subordinate civilian administrations and a politically ambitious Bengal council, and, between military forces mobilized across the shifting boundaries of the Company’s territorial expanse and civil administrators in the locales of western India—all received a more unequivocal response in the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Experiments that had been haltingly devised in response to deep structural problems that routinely surfaced during preceding periods of intensified military conflict were radically addressed. Legal innovations like delegating sweeping unqualified powers to military commanders were combined with the deployment of a politically effective ideology of Francophobia to set the stage for what became the most ambitious political project of conquest crafted in the long eighteenth century—the war against the Marathas.

Sailors,Zielverkopers, and the Dutch East India Company: The maritime labour market in eighteenth-century Surat

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-364
Author(s):  
GHULAM A. NADRI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Western India ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Political Economic

AbstractIn the second half of the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) employed hundreds of Indian sailors in Surat in western India to man its ships plying the Asian waters. TheMoorse zeevarenden(Muslim sailors) performed a variety of tasks on board ships and in the port of Batavia, and made it possible for the Company to carry out its commercial ventures across the Indian Ocean. The relationship between the two, however, was rather complex and even contentious. Based on Dutch sources, this article investigates the political-economic contexts of this relationship, examines the structure and organization of the maritime labour market in Surat, and illuminates the role and significance ofzielverkopers(labour contractors) and of the local administration. The analysis of the social, economic, and familial aspects of the market and labour relations in Surat sheds light on pre-capitalist forms of labour recruitment and the institutional dynamics of the Indian labour market.

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