=========ABSTRACT=========It is tempting to think of precolonial India as a harmonious society, but was it? This study brings evidence from new and unexpected sources to take position in the... Show more=========ABSTRACT=========It is tempting to think of precolonial India as a harmonious society, but was it? This study brings evidence from new and unexpected sources to take position in the sensitive debate over that question. From the investigation of six conflicts in the Deccan region it draws conclusions about group behaviour that put modern clashes in context. Some of the conflicts under investigation appear odd today but were very real to the involved, as the antagonism between Left and Right Hand castes was for about a thousand years. Other conflicts continue to the present day: the seventeenth century saw lasting changes in the relationship between Hindus and Muslims as well as the rise of patriotism and early nationalism in both India and Europe. This book carefully brings to life the famous and obscure people who made the era, from the Dutch painter Heda to queen Khadija and from maharaja Shivaji to the English rebel Keigwin=========NOTES=========First Leiden University Press edition, 2009. Entirely revised from the author’s dissertation Xenophobia and Consciousness in Seventeenth-Century India: Six Cases from the Deccan, 12-Mar-2008. Show less
This thesis investigates the structural changes in the agrarian society in Western parts of Sri Lanka as seen in the mid and late eighteenth century in the context of the encounter with the Dutch... Show moreThis thesis investigates the structural changes in the agrarian society in Western parts of Sri Lanka as seen in the mid and late eighteenth century in the context of the encounter with the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) administration. It attempts to understand the developments in the period from the vantage point of the peasantry, particularly by looking at the ways in which the peasants were affected by the Dutch colonial intervention and how they adjusted themselves to the changing economic and political reality. One of the characteristic features of the VOC rule was the higher degree of exploitation of peasant compared with the situation under pre-colonial rulers, because economic interests of the former was much higher than the latter. This situation brought about a break down of the structural equilibrium of the system of production and taxation. It is mainly within this context of structural break down that this study try to understand the long lasting changes in the social and economic setting. It discusses the changes in the production system with special reference to land utilization and labour organisation, changing aspects of the land tenure system, emergence of new class differentiations and new dynamics of caste formation. Show less
