Cited by 0Agriculture, Land Use, Rural DevelopmentAgricultural Economics and PracticesLand Rights and Reforms

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Celebrating a Study of India’s Agrarian History

Open access
Moosvi, Shireen·2013·Review of Agrarian Studies

Abstract

International Development, Political Economy

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This special essay marks the fiftieth anniversary of Irfan Habib's *The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707)* by reviewing the book's scope, source base, reception, and the substantial changes made in its 1999 second edition. Moosvi argues the work remains a landmark whose revised edition has been under-noticed by reviewers despite its important reinterpretation of the village community.

Key findings

  • Habib's 1963 book (454 pages) was widely acclaimed: Tapan Raychaudhuri called its publication one of the rare occasions that "stir the turbid and yet extensive waters of Indian historiography," and Percival Spear described it as "a brilliant achievement in breadth and depth by a still young scholar." Its novelty lay in an integrated scope covering production, consumption, trade, famine, agrarian rights, taxation and administration, and in a fundamental extension of the source base to Persian manuscripts, archival documents, travellers' accounts and modern official literature.
  • Criticism was tempered: many Indian historians held that Mughal conditions were described "in much harsher terms than was warranted by the evidence," that the oppressive nature of the Mughal state was overstated; M. Athar Ali disputed excessive exploitation and peasant revolts, and J. F. Richards rejected the agrarian-crisis thesis "in toto."
  • The 1999 second edition (548 pages, nearly 100 pages longer) retained the original structure except Chapter IV ("Village Community"), which was "entirely recast and greatly enlarged"; Habib states his views on the village community "changed substantially," no longer treating differentiation and internal oligarchy as signs of the community's disruption and decline.
  • Chapter 9, "The Agrarian Crisis of the Mughal Empire," remained largely the same but added a caveat about "the universal propensity to contrast the grim present with a rosier past" and a new recognition of the rebelling peasants' ideological backwardness. The second edition drew almost no reviews (few in India, none abroad), though a paperback followed the next year and there have been at least eight reprints since.

Methods

  • This is a historiographical review essay, not an empirical study; it analyses the content, reception and revisions of Habib's book rather than presenting new primary data.
  • It draws on published reviews and responses (Raychaudhuri 1965; Spear 1965; Pignatelli 1964–65; Athar Ali 1966; Richards 1993) and on close comparison of passages from the 1963 and 1999 editions.
  • Main analysis is qualitative: juxtaposing first- and second-edition passages, tracing Habib's engagement with Marxist historiography, and assessing the second edition's additions and omissions.

Limitations

  • The paper states that the second edition "offers no improvement on the first edition" on gender, retaining "the unspoken assumption that one can ignore the treatment meted out to women as being outside the scope of agrarian history," despite Habib's own 2000 essay on medieval gender history.
  • It also notes Habib's "avoidance of any direct debate with his critics," with Raychaudhuri's critique not directly addressed and absent from the Bibliography; the author herself calls these "trivial complaints."
  • Evident from the text (not stated as a limitation by the author): the essay is explicitly celebratory and the author notes her own prior involvement, having been "perhaps the first to seek some modifications" to Habib's agrarian-crisis thesis (Moosvi 1985), which may colour the assessment.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.25003/ras.03.02.0005

Cites

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Figures

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CC-BY-NC-ND · From the PDF

Verification

Claims the paper makes

12 Sources not found · 12 No basis given · 4 Own interpretation · 3 Own result · 1 Not checked yet

Show all 3 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 25
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 12
29 of 29
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The number of journal reviews and reprints is a reliable indicator of a book's impact and readership.

    “Very few journals in India, and none abroad, have cared to review it.”
    “there have been at least eight reprints since then, suggests that the book has an increasing number of readers”
1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Still being checked.

Research works printed but not linked: 27

  1. Davies, Colin C. (1965), "Review of The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556-1707)
  2. by Irfan Habib, " History, Journal of the Historical Association, vol.
  3. Gupta, D. N. (ed.) (1995), Changing Modes of Production in India: An Historical Analysis, Hindu College, Delhi.
  4. Habib, Irfan (1969a), "Problems of Marxist Historical Analysis, " Enquiry, New Series, vol. 3, no.
  5. Habib, Irfan (1969b), "Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India, " Journal of Economic History, vol. 29, March.
  6. Habib, Irfan (1971), "Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India, " Enquiry, New Series, vol. 5, no.
  7. Habib, Irfan (1982), An Atlas of the Mughal Empire, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
  8. Habib, Irfan (1983), "Marx's Perception of India, " The Marxist, vol. 1, no.
  9. Habib, Irfan (1985a), "Studying a Colonial Economy -Without Perceiving Colonialism, " Modern Asian Studies, vol. 19, no.
  10. Habib, Irfan (1985b), "Processes of Accumulation in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India, " Indian Historical Review, vol. XI, nos. 1-2.
  11. Habib, Irfan (1987), "A System of Trimetallism in the Age of the Price Revolution", in J. F. Richards (ed.), The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
  12. Habib, Irfan (1995b), "Mode of Production in Medieval India, " in D. N. Gupta (ed.), Changing Modes of Production in India: An Historical Analysis, Hindu College, Delhi.
  13. Habib, Irfan (1999), The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556-1707), second (revised) edition, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
  14. Habib, Irfan (2000), "Exploring Medieval Gender History, " paper presented at a symposium, Indian History Congress, Aligarh.
  15. Hobsbawm, Eric (1964), "Introduction, " in Hobsbawm, Eric (ed.), Karl Marx: Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Jack Cohen (trans.), Lawrence and Wishart, London.
  16. Marx, Karl (1887), Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Frederick Engels (ed.), Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (trans.), Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., London.
  17. Moosvi, Shireen (1985), "Scarcities, Prices and Exploitation: The Agrarian Crisis, 1658-70, " Studies in History, vol. 1, no.
  18. Moosvi, Shireen (1995), "Comments" (on Irfan Habib, "Mode of Production in Medieval India"), in D. N. Gupta (ed.), Changing Modes of Production in India: An Historical Analysis, Hindu College, Delhi.
  19. Moreland, W. H. (1929), The Agrarian System of Moslem India: A Historical essay with Appendices, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  20. Pignatelli, Luigi (1964-65), "Review of The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556-1707)
  21. by Irfan Habib, " East and West, New Series, vol. 15, nos. 1-2.
  22. Raychaudhuri, Tapan (1965), "The Agrarian System of Mughal India, " Enquiry, New Series, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring.
  23. Raychaudhuri, Tapan, and Habib, Irfan (eds.) (1982), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  24. Richards, J. F. (ed.) (1987), The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
  25. Richards, J. F. (1993), The Mughal Empire, The New Cambridge History of India, Vol. 1.5, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  26. Spear, Percival (1965), A History of India, vol. 2, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
  27. Wittfogel, Karl A. (1957), Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study in Total Power, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Moosvi, S.
Corresponding author
Moosvi, Shireen
Venue
Review of Agrarian Studies
Published
2013-12-31
Volume
3
Issue
2
Pages
105-112
ISSN
  • 2248-9002 (ISSN-L)
  • 2249-4405
OpenAlex
W2276604640
Cited by
0
References
0
FWCI
0.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc-nd
Locations
  • Review of Agrarian Studies (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Review of Agrarian Studies (submittedVersion)
  • The journal (submittedVersion)
  • AgEcon Search (University of Minnesota, USA)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Development › Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agricultural Economics and Practices
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Land Rights and Reforms
Keywords
agricultural history, agrarian studies

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