Change in Bengal Agrarian Society C. 1760-1850

Change in Bengal Agrarian Society c. 1760-1850seeks to trace the course of change in the agrarian society of Bengal under the rule of the East India Company with special reference to the impact of the Permanent Settlement introduced in Bengal and Bihar on 1 May 1793 and later in Madras and Varanasi presidencies and most of northern India.

Divided into three parts, Part One is an attempt to describe the nature of land tenures and the different categories of land rights, as they prevailed before the Permanent Settlement. Part Two is an exploration of five localities covering districts from West, North, and former East Bengal and covers a wide spectrum of geographical and social con­ditions including the lie of the land, the composition of the population, the conditions of land tenure before the Permanent Settlement, the resultant rent-sharing structure, etc. Part Three deals with changes and continuity in the rural order as it emerged in the nineteenth cen­tury?from?the?1790s.

The work is based on wide ranging original source material. Ananda Bhattacharyya’s Introduction to this remarkable work places it in context.