Peasants, Famine and the State in Colonial Western India

Download or read book Peasants, Famine and the State in Colonial Western India written by D. Hall-Matthews and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent literature has suggested that famines are complex, long-drawn-out and political processes, rather than sudden, natural phenomena. This book is among the first to examine such a process in detail, by studying poor peasants in Ahmednagar district, Western India, between 1870 and 1884. It does so by investigating their factors of production - land, capital and labour - as well as markets in credit and the cheap foodgrains they produced and, above all, their relationship with the colonial state.