Q.120 marks · 250w 15 min Medium
Would you consider eighteenth century in India an era of ‘Dark Age’, or a period of economic growth? Elucidate.
Subtopic: Paper I · The eighteenth century: dark age or period of economic growth
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Present the two historiographical positions with their evidence, then resolve by distinguishing political decline from economic change and by region.
- Muzaffar Alam on Awadh and Punjab showed successor states with functioning revenue systems and rising local prosperity, in which the decline of Delhi meant the rise of Lucknow and Faizabad.
- C. A. Bayly, in Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, traced the growth of intermediate towns, merchant communities and service groups whose commercial networks survived and profited from political change.
- Banking and commerce expanded. The house of the Jagat Seths in Bengal, and comparable firms elsewhere, financed states and armies — the emergence of what Bayly and Subrahmanyam call portfolio capitalists.
- Regional states invested. Maratha, Hyderabadi, Bengali and Mysorean rulers built irrigation, patronised temples and towns, and competed to attract merchants.
- Distinguish the object. The Mughal empire declined; the Indian economy did not decline uniformly with it. Resources were redistributed from the centre to the regions.
- Distinguish region. The Doab, Rajasthan and the war corridors suffered severely; Bengal, Awadh, Hyderabad and the Maratha territories in western India saw growth for much of the century.
- Distinguish period. The most severe economic damage in Bengal follows the Company's assumption of the diwani in 1765 and the famine of 1770 — colonial, not Mughal, in origin.