Table Of ContentIndia, Modernity and the Great Divergence
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Library of Economic History
General Editor
Peer Vries (University of Vienna)
VOLUME 8
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lehi
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India, Modernity and the
Great Divergence
Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.)
By
Kaveh Yazdani
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Cover illustration: “British infantry of East India Company fighting against Mysorean and French troops at
the Battle of Cuddalore, 1st of July 1783”, watercolor painting by Richard Simkin, 1890. With kind permission
of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Yazdani, Kaveh, author.
Title: India, modernity and the great divergence : Mysore and Gujarat (17th
to 19th c.) / by Kaveh Yazdani.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Library of economic
history, ISSN 1877-3206 ; volume 8 | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046752 (print) | LCCN 2016056968 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004330788 (hardback : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9789004330795
(e-book) | ISBN 9789004330795 (E-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Mysore (India : State)--Civilization. | Gujarat
(India)--Civilization. | Social change--India--History. | Economic
development--India--History. | India--Civilization--European influences. |
India--Civilization--1200-1765. | India--Civilization--1765-1947. |
India--Relations--Europe. | Europe--Relations--India.
Classification: LCC DS485.M9 Y39 2017 (print) | LCC DS485.M9 (ebook) |
DDC 954/.7502--dc23
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016046752
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1877-3206
isbn 978-90-04-33078-8 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-33079-5 (e-book)
Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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I would like to dedicate this book to Daie whose continuous love,
devotion and mentorship has, more than anything else, shaped and
influenced my personal and intellectual developments throughout the
years. I truly appreciate and am deeply indebted to his everlasting and
unconditional advice, care and support.
⸪
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vii
“Kaveh Yazdani’s work is hugely ambitious. It seeks simultaneously to attempt a
micro-history of two advanced commercial regions of India – Mysore and Gujarat
in the eighteenth century – and to intervene more broadly in the ongoing debates
on modernity and its origins in the context of the great divergence between the
west and the rest. In embarking on such a study, Yazdani treads a complex path
as he works his way through existing scholarship, conceptual and empirical, to
argue for the plurality of historical experience, in this case of modernity. Drawing
from an impressive range of archival material and subjecting it to very critical
scrutiny, what Yazdani does is to identify all those elements that are commonly
understood to embody modernity, to attempt a periodization of modernity and to
examine actual social and economic processes in the era of what he calls middle
modernity (17th to 19th centuries). These processes contributed very definitively
to a new register of experience and social transformation. What marks Yazdani’s
work is both his contribution to a deeper understanding of transformation in Asia
as well as his choice of methodology that moves away from earlier frames adopted
by global and connected histories.”
– Lakshmi Subramanian, Professor of History, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Calcutta
“Kaveh Yazdani takes his reader on an epic global journey of re-discovery that
plies an authentic passage to India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
shorn of all Eurocentric baggage. On the way over our passenger will be treated to
the intriguing sights of a macro-global picture of the world, before disembarking
to witness the detailed sights of Mysore and Gujarat, some of which has not been
seen before, even by non-Eurocentric revisionists, and none of which to date has
been brought together in so much vivid detail. With global and local history com-
bined at its most impressive, this truly remarkable journey is worth every penny
of the ticket price.”
– John M. Hobson, Professor of Politics and International Relations, The University of
Sheffield
“‘My immediate reaction on reading Kaveh Yazdani’s work was unequivocal; mon-
umental and definitive. Through a microscopic analysis of two regions in India,
Gujarat and Mysore, Yazdani has deconstructed the complexity of the process of
modernization and at the same time provided a new perspective to our under-
standing of the Great Divergence that took place between the West and the rest.
This book is a must read for any historian working on modernity and the Great
Divergence.”
– Sashi Sivramkrishna, Professor of Economics, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management
Studies, Bangalore
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viii
“Framed by a discussion of the chronological and geographical bounds of mo-
dernity, and centering around a detailed analysis of developments in Mysore and
Gujarat, Kaveh Yazdan’s new work is one of the most important recent Marxist
studies of 17th and 18th century India. Transcending the false polarity offered by
Eurocentric and Postcolonial perspectives, Yazdani takes seriously the possibilities
for indigenous capitalist development in India, but provides a compelling account
of the internal and external factors which combined to prevent it.”
– Neil Davidson, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Glasgow
“Recent discussion about modernities and convergences seem to have focused
mainly on China. This is why the present book on India and “convergence”, from
which I have learned much, is topical and welcome.”
– Fredric Jameson, Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Professor of Comparative Literature, Duke
University, Durhamn
“Kaveh Yazdani has assembled an extraordinary range of materials on economic
life in Mysore and Gujarat in the long eighteenth century. This wonderful book
is essential reading for all those interested in global economic history and in the
divergence debate.”
– Prasannan Parthasarathi, Professor of History, Boston College
“Yazdani’s book represents a major contribution to the ‘the Great Divide’ debate.
It brings India into a central role in global history, using it to link East and West. It
also shifts focus from anachronistic national to contemporaneous regional levels
of state and economy, posing new questions and finding some strikingly original
answers. It is a ‘must-read’ for all those interested in global history.”
– David Washbrook, Fellow, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
“Yazdani has made a great addition to scholarship on the Great Divergence. His
analysis of military, economic, technical, and political advances in Mysore and
Gujarat – two of the most commercially advanced areas of 17th and 18th century
India – sheds new light on the nature and complexity of the differences between
contemporary Indian and European states. No analysis of the Great Divergence
will be credible without taking Yazdani’s research, and Indian developments, into
account.”
– Jack A. Goldstone, Hazel Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax
“This is an extraordinarily impressive inquiry into European-Asian difference in
the early modern period which is as erudite and meticulous as it is ambitious.”
– Victor Lieberman, Raoul Wallenberg Distinguished Professor of History, University of
Michigan
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Contents
Acknowledgements xiii
Problem of Quotation and Transliteration xvi
List of Illustrations XVII
List of Abbreviations XVIII
Glossary xx
Maps xxvi
Introduction 1
0.1) Preliminary Remarks 1
0.2) Purpose of Study 2
0.3) Unprinted Primary Sources 11
0.4) Orientalism 11
0.5) Eurocentrism 13
0.6) Methodology 14
0.7) Modes of Production 16
0.8) Modernity 22
0.9) ‘Simultaneity of the Non-Simultaneous’ 31
0.10) Modernity as a Historical Process and the Problem of
Periodization 32
0.11) Prospect 61
1 The Transitional State of India’s History of Ideas, Science, Technology
and Culture in the 17th and 18th Centuries 66
1.1) Introduction 66
1.2) Critical Thinking and Indo-Persian Curiosity vis-à-vis Europe 69
1.3) Late 18th Century Indo-Persian Preoccupation with the British
Political System 79
1.4) Technology 84
1.5) Documents and Manuscripts 98
1.6) Science and Learning 100
1.7) Printing 105
1.8) Art, Culture and the Emergence of a ‘Public Sphere’ 107
1.9) King Serfoji ii 111
1.10) Conclusion 112
2 Mysore 115
2.1) Preliminary Remarks 115
2.2) Economy 116
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x contents
2.2.1) Introduction 116
2.2.2) Agriculture and Agrarian Social Relations 130
2.2.3) Living Conditions 165
2.2.4) Commerce and Mercantilism 170
2.2.5) Manufacture and Technology 184
2.2.6) Property Rights 212
2.3) Administration 220
2.3.1) Introduction 220
2.3.2) Tipu’s Administration 223
2.3.3) Revenues 227
2.3.4) Conclusion 229
2.4) Mobility, Transport and Infrastructure 230
2.4.1) Conclusion 236
2.5) Military Establishment 239
2.5.1) Introduction 239
2.5.2) Cavalry 244
2.5.3) Infantry and Artillery 247
2.5.4) Rocket Technology 251
2.5.5) Fortification 255
2.5.6) Marine 256
2.5.7) Conclusion 272
2.6) Education 279
2.6.1) Conclusion 285
2.7) Foreign Relations and Semi-Modernization 285
2.7.1) Introduction 285
2.7.2) Missions to France and the Ottoman Empire 289
2.7.3) Afghanistan, Persia and the Conspiracies of European
Powers 299
2.7.4) Conclusion 307
2.8) Political Structure – towards the Establishment of an
Islamic Theocracy 308
2.8.1) Conclusion 334
2.9) Resistance and the British Invasion 336
2.9.1) Conclusion 349
2.10) General Conclusion 350
3 Gujarat 361
3.1) Preliminary Remarks 361
3.2) Economy 363
3.2.1) Introduction 363
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