An Enduring Prestige: Land Grants in a Princely State Census
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Brian T. Cannon in
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Abstract
This essay employs the land register of a late nineteenth-century Hindi census conducted in the princely state of Marwar (Rajasthan) to examine the durability of the tax-free (sasan) land grant regime over the course of three centuries. It evaluates the privilege sasan grants inured on their holders until the mid-twentieth century, when a series of a structural land reforms all but overnight changed the ways in which grant holders and their kin interacted with land and state authorities. The essay reads processes of land grant donation and maintenance across a wide social, economic, and ecological spectrum. In so doing, it challenges historiographical assumptions of religion as a fundamental grant donation motive in the region, as well as the idea that land relations were primarily defined by revenue extraction in early modern and colonial north India.
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An Enduring Prestige: Land Grants in a Princely State Census
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Brian T. Cannon in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This essay employs the land register of a late nineteenth-century Hindi census conducted in the princely state of Marwar (Rajasthan) to examine the durability of the tax-free (sasan) land grant regime over the course of three centuries. It evaluates the privilege sasan grants inured on their holders until the mid-twentieth century, when a series of a structural land reforms all but overnight changed the ways in which grant holders and their kin interacted with land and state authorities. The essay reads processes of land grant donation and maintenance across a wide social, economic, and ecological spectrum. In so doing, it challenges historiographical assumptions of religion as a fundamental grant donation motive in the region, as well as the idea that land relations were primarily defined by revenue extraction in early modern and colonial north India.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1039 | 225 | 33 |
| Full Text Views | 191 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 290 | 13 | 0 |
