3 Review(s)

"The volume deals with the inter-relations between agricultural production, agrarian trade, markets, towns and population of urban Rajasthan in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries. The factors for the growth of the agrarian markets are discussed in the light of the archival sources like arhsattas, toji-do-varkhi-baje-talke, sava bahis and khas-rukka-parwana bahis, of Amber (Jaipur), Hadauti (Kota), Bikaner and Marwar (Jodhpur) respectively. For this work since direct data on population count before 1881 is elusive the author has used house-count as well as different kinds of taxes (kholari, jhumpari and dhuan) while calculating the population of different urban centres. The question that how some of these markets gradually earned the status of towns is shown through available evidence. This study also displays that how the higher receipts from sair-jihat (non-agrarian taxes) in various areas of Rajasthan, worked in the evolution of agrarian markets into qasbas. The book uses various methods for working out the urban population of the pre-census period, the comparison with that of the census-count and calculates decline in it. On the same line the volume shows the fall in industrial activity in the late nineteenth century which broadly corresponds with the theory of de-industrialization and de-urbanization. This volume is essential reading for scholars of Agrarian History of Rajasthan in the colonial period."