VIII – History Ch-3 Ruling the countryside

               Chapter -3 Ruling the countryside                  ************************************

Bengal under British

The Company Becomes the Diwan

 

v  After the battle of Buxar , dual government was set up in Bengal.

v  East India Company got the Diwani Rights means rights to collect the revenue from the farmers.

v  The Company became the chief financial administrator of the territory.

v The revenue collected in Bengal was used to finance the purchase of goods like fine cotton and silk cloth for export and to meet the growing expenses of the company.

Economic Crisis in Bengal

 

v Bengal economy began facing a deep crisis after British got the control there.

v The British revenue system in the beginning was irregular and The system of collecting the revenue was unfriendly, exploitive and oppressive.

v Artisans were deserting villages since they were being forced to sell their goods to the Company at low prices.

v Peasants were unable to pay the dues that were being demanded from them.

v Artisanal production was in decline and agricultural cultivation collapsed

v  in 1770 a terrible famine killed ten million people in Bengal.

v About one-third of the population was wiped out.

 

New land revenue system

 

v *Most Company officials felt that investment in land had to be

v encouraged and agriculture had to be improved to overcome the economic Crisis.

v The British introduced three new systems of land revenue settlement in different part of India.

To increase agricultural productivity , collected revenue these were

1. Permanent settlement

2. Ryotwari system

3. Mahalwari system

 

        Topic:  Permanent settlement (8.2)

 

British land revenue systems

 

*The British introduced three new systems of land revenue settlement in different part of India.

1. Permanent settlement

2. Ryotwari system

3. Mahalwari system

 

Permanent settlement

(Zamindari System)

v East India Company finally introduced the Permanent Settlement in 1793.

v It was introduced by Lord Cornwallis in Bengal , Bihar , Orissa .

v It was an agreement between the Company and landlords in the villages to collect the revenue from the farmers.

v According to the terms of the settlement, the rajas and taluqdars were recognized as zamindars.

v Zamindars became the permanent land owners .

v They were asked to collect rent from the peasants and pay revenue to the Company.

v The amount to be paid was fixed permanently, it was not to be increased ever in future.

v British felt that this would ensure a regular flow of revenue into the Company’s coffers.

v Company thought that it would encourage the zamindars to invest in improving the land.

v Zamindars had to pay 89% of the collected land revenue to British.

v Zamindars had to fixed  amount every year.

v If zamindars failed to pay the fixed amount they had to lose their property.

v Zamindars had hereditary property rights.

 

Positive impacts

It provided financial security to the British.’

Big land lords became the supporters of British.

 

Negative impacts

The Permanent Settlement created problems.

v The revenue that had been fixed was so high that the zamindars as well as farmers found it difficult to pay.

v Numerous zamindaris were sold off at auctions and farmers lost their land.

v Zamindars did not take any interest in improving the land.

v Revenue demands of the zamindars went up and farmers suffered.

v many  Small farmers   were harassed  by  demands  for  higher  land  revenue.

 

Ryotwari system

 

v The Ryotwari system was introduced by Alexander Read and later Thomas Munro developed it in Madras and Bombay presidency in 1826.Later it was implemented in Assam.

v The British made settlements with the Ryots (Farmers) who had been tilling the land.

v In this system land ownership rights were with the farmers.

v The British government directly collected the taxes from the farmers.

v Their fields was carefully and separately surveyed before the revenue assessment.

v Taxes were fixed according to the fertility.

v The revenue rates were 50% for dry land and 60% for the irrigated land. The amount of tax was revised in every thirty years.

v This system eliminated the middle man.

v The farmer could be expelled from the possession of land if they were unable to pay the tax.

Limitations

 

v This system became oppressive British revenue officials were corrupt. They exploited the farmers.

v Revenue officials fixed too high a revenue demand. Peasants were unable to pay, ryots fled the countryside, and villages became deserted in many regions.

v The British insisted farmers for growing cash crops as cash crops required more  growing and maintenance cost it compelled the peasants to take more loans from money lenders.

 

Mahalwari system

 

v This system was introduced by Holt Mackenzie the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency ( Uttar Pradesh) in1822 .

v Later it was implemented in parts of        central India, Punjab. 

v The settlement was made with the village or group of villages (Mahal)

v The charge of collecting the revenue and paying it to the Company

v was given to the village headman or  “Lambardar” .

v Under this system collectors inspected the land and recorded the important data of farmers in villages

v The estimated revenue of each plot within a village was added up to calculate the revenue that each village (mahal) had to pay.

v This demand was revised periodically, it was not permanently fixed.

Limitations

 

v British charged revenue of 50% - 70% of the total farm production. Many peasants got into  debt due to their inability to pay land revenue.

v Due to high revenue demands large area of land began to pass in the hand of money lenders.

v Farmers began to lose their land. The system of collecting the revenue was unfriendly and oppressive.

         

Plantation farming in India

Crops for Europe

 

v British persuaded or forced cultivators in various parts of India to produce crops required in Europe.

v Such as jute in Bengal, tea in Assam, sugarcane in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), wheat in Punjab, cotton in Maharashtra and Punjab, rice in Madras and indigo in Bihar and Bengal .

 

Plantation: 

v A large farm operated by  a planter employing various  forms of  forced labour.

v Plantations are associated with the production of coffee, sugarcane,  tobacco, tea and cotton

v Plantation Farming was promoted during the British rule.

v Company granted lands at cheaper rates to European traders to develop Plantation farms.

 

 Important features of plantation farming are

 

v 1) Plantation agriculture is a type of commercial farming in which single crop is grown . British promoted crops tea, coffee, sugarcane, cashew, rubber or cotton.

v 2) Large amount of labour and capital are required.

v 3) The produce may be processed on the farm itself or in nearby factories.

 

History of Indigo farming

 

v During the eighteen century there was huge demand of Indigo in Europe because –

v British cloth dyers preferred indigo as a dye.

v Indigo produced a rich blue colour, whereas the dye from woad was pale and dull.

v It was in great demands prices were high. Indigo plantation owners earned huge profits.

v Europeans began cultivating indigo in their colonies

v Like   The French began cultivation of indigo in St Domingue in the Caribbean islands,

v The Portuguese in Brazil, the English in Jamaica, and the Spanish in Venezuela.

v Indigo plantations also came up in many parts of North America.

 

Indigo Plantation farming in India

 

v India was the biggest supplier of indigo in the world during the British period.

v Indigo was cultivated in India and was exported to European countries.

v From the last decades of the eighteenth century indigo cultivation in Bengal expanded rapidly.

v Bengal indigo came to dominate the world market.

v As the indigo trade grew, commercial agents and officials of the Company began investing in indigo production.

v By 1810, about 95 % of the Indigo imported into Britain was from India.

v Over the years many Company officials left their jobs to look after their indigo business. Attracted by the prospect of high profits, numerous Scotsmen and Englishmen came to India and became planters.

 

 Methods of Indigo farming in India

 

There were two main systems of indigo cultivation –

1. Nij System

2.Ryoti System

Nij cultivation

 

v Under the nij cultivation, the rich planter produced indigo in their lands.

v  He either bought the land or rented it from other zamindars and produced indigo by directly employing cheap labourers.

v Planters directly produced the indigo by employing the cheap labourers on their own or rented land.

 

The problem with nij cultivation

 

v Till the late nineteenth century, planters were therefore reluctant to expand the area under nij cultivation.

v  Less than 25 per cent of the land producing indigo was under this system.

v The planters found it difficult to expand the area under nij cultivation because of the following reasons -

1. Unavability of the land - Indigo could be cultivated only on fertile lands, and these were all already densely populated. Large blocks of land were not easily available so planters began forcing farmers to leave the land .this led to conflicts and tension.

2. Unavability of Labour  :A large Indigo plantation required large number of cheap labourers but worker were not easy to mobilize.

 3.Large investment :Nij cultivation on a large scale also required many ploughs and bullocks.

Investing on purchase and maintenance of ploughs was a big problem.

 

Ryoti System

v Under the ryoti system, the planters forced the ryots(small farmers) to sign a contract, an agreement (satta).

v At times they pressurized the village headmen to sign the contract on behalf of the ryots.

v Those who signed the contract got cash advances from the planters at low rates of interest to produce indigo.

v The planter provided the seed and the drill, while the cultivators prepared the soil, sowed the seed and looked after the crop.

v When the crop was delivered to the planter after the harvest, a new loan was given to the ryot, and the cycle started all over again.

 

Problems with Ryoti System

1.Farmers were not ready to grow the indigo Planters forced them to grow indigo on their fertile land .

2. Indigo plants have a complex root system which degrades the land.

3. Farmers were forced to sell the indigo to the British at lower fixed prices.

 

The “Blue Rebellion”

 

v In 1859, the indigo ryots in Bengal refused to grow indigo.

v As the rebellion spread, ryots refused to pay rents to the planters, and attacked indigo factories

v armed with swords and spears, bows and arrows.

v Those who worked for the planters were socially boycotted, and the gomasthas– agents of

v planters – who came to collect rent were beaten up.

v Local zamindars and village headmen supported  rebellion against the planters.

v In many villages, headmen who had been forced to sign indigo  contracts, mobilised the indigo peasants

 

Causes of Blue Rebellion

 

v The indigo system was intensely oppressive.

v Farmers were not ready to grow the indigo planters forced them to grow indigo on their fertile land.

v Cultivation of Indigo degraded the land and its fertility.

v Farmers were forced to sell the indigo to the British at lower fixed prices.

v Gomast has who were appointed by British company to give advances and to collect the harvests were outsiders and rude. they humiliated, punished and sometimes used the forces on villagers for small mistakes

v Zamindars were unhappy with the increasing power of the planters and angry at being forced by the planters to give them land on long leases.

 

British reaction

v The British government used military to protect the planters from assault, and set up the Indigo Commission to enquire into the system of indigo production.

v The Commission declared planters guilty, and criticised them for the coercive methods they used with indigo cultivators.

v It declared that indigo production was not profitable for ryots.

v  The Commission asked the ryots to fulfill their existing contracts but also told them that they could refuse to produce indigo in future.

 

Effects –

 

v After the revolt, indigo production collapsed in Bengal. But the planters shifted their operation to Bihar.

v With the discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century their business was severely affected.

v (Read about How was indigo produced? from book page no. 34) 

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