Economy and Society in Early India

Economy and Society in Early India
Author: Dwijendra Narayan Jha
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1993
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Description: This work throws a flush of multi-coloured light on the Economic Organization in Ancient India from 200 BC to 200 AD. Due to the advent of alien tribes in India, this period opened new vistas of transitional era and ventilated new air of thoughtful broodings, establishing sound venues in the economic field of India making a peep into India's ties with neighbouring and distant countries in the spheres of trade and commerce, transport and communication. The present work is not merely a survey but a microscopic and complete reexamination of the prevailing concepts including land-ownership, land-tenureship, state and economy, fiscal policy and taxation. Thus it presents a panoramic revelation of commerce and economics in history with an humble approach of intensifying the cultural heritage of India. Unlike other nations, economic conditions in India have always closely been interwoven with her socio-cultural fabric throughout the pages of history. In modern times, to speak of 'pure economics' in India will be a misnomer to a large extent. In this light, the present work should not only be looked with an academician's eye, but also from the point of view of those whose interest of study lie in researches of history as it envisage to unveil the spheres of economics and planning in modern times.

The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity

The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity
Author: Matthew Adam Cobb
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351732447

The period from the death of Alexander the Great to the rise of the Islam (c. late fourth century BCE to seventh century CE) saw a significant growth in economic, diplomatic and cultural exchange between various civilisations in Africa, Europe and Asia. This was in large part thanks to the Indian Ocean trade. Peoples living in the Roman Empire, Parthia, India and South East Asia increasingly had access to exotic foreign products, while the lands from which they derived, and the peoples inhabiting these lands, also captured the imagination, finding expression in a number of literary and poetic works. The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity provides a range of chapters that explore the economic, political and cultural impact of this trade on these diverse societies, written by international experts working in the fields of Classics, Archaeology, South Asian studies, Near Eastern studies and Art History. The three major themes of the book are the development of this trade, how consumption and exchange impacted on societal developments, and how the Indian Ocean trade influenced the literary creations of Graeco-Roman and Indian authors. This volume will be of interest not only to academics and students of antiquity, but also to scholars working on later periods of Indian Ocean history who will find this work a valuable resource.

Bazaar India

Bazaar India
Author: Anand A. Yang
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1999-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520919969

The role of markets in linking local communities to larger networks of commerce, culture, and political power is the central element in Anand A. Yang's provocative and original study. Yang uses bazaars in the northeast Indian state of Bihar during the colonial period as the site of his investigation. The bazaar provides a distinctive locale for posing fundamental questions regarding indigenous societies under colonialism and for highlighting less familiar aspects of colonial India. At one level, Yang reconstructs Bihar's marketing system, from its central place in the city of Patna down to the lowest rung of the periodic markets. But he also concentrates on the dynamics of exchanges and negotiations between different groups and on what can be learned through the "voices" of people in the bazaar: landholders, peasants, traders, and merchants. Along the way, Yang uncovers a wealth of details on the functioning of rural trade, markets, fairs, and pilgrimages in Bihar. A key contribution of Bazaar India is its many-stranded narrative history of some of South Asia's primary actors over the past two centuries. But Yang's approach is not that of a detached observer; rather, his own voice is engaged with the voices of the past and with present-day historians. By focusing on the world beyond the mud walls of the village, he widens the imaginative geography of South Asian history. Readers with an interest in markets, social history, culture, colonialism, British India, and historiographic methods will welcome his book.

The Organization of Ancient Economies

The Organization of Ancient Economies
Author: Kenneth Hirth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108863671

In this book, Kenneth Hirth provides a comparative view of the organization of ancient and premodern society and economy. Hirth establishes that humans adapted to their environments, not as individuals but in the social groups where they lived and worked out the details of their livelihoods. He explores the variation in economic organization used by simple and complex societies to procure, produce, and distribute resources required by both individual households and the social and political institutions that they supported. Drawing on a wealth of archaeological, historic, and ethnographic information, he develops and applies an analytical framework for studying ancient societies that range from the hunting and gathering groups of native North America, to the large state societies of both the New and Old Worlds. Hirth demonstrates that despite differences in transportation and communication technologies, the economic organization of ancient and modern societies are not as different as we sometimes think.

The Ancient Indus

The Ancient Indus
Author: Rita P. Wright
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2009-10-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780521572194

This early civilization was erased from human memory until 1924, when it was rediscovered and announced in the Illustrated London Times. Our understanding of the Indus has been partially advanced by textual sources from Mesopotamia that contain references to Meluhha, a land identified by cuneiform specialists as the Indus, with which the ancient Mesopotamians traded and engaged in battles. In this volume, Rita P. Wright uses both Mesopotamian texts but principally the results of archaeological excavations and surveys to draw a rich account of the Indus civilization's well-planned cities, its sophisticated alterations to the landscape, and the complexities of its agrarian and craft-producing economy. She focuses principally on the social networks established between city and rural communities; farmers, pastoralists, and craft producers; and Indus merchants and traders and the symbolic imagery that the civilization shared with contemporary cultures in Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf region. Broadly comparative, her study emphasizes the interconnected nature of early societies.

Critical Reflections on Economy and Politics in India

Critical Reflections on Economy and Politics in India
Author: Raju J. Das
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2020-03-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004415564

In this book, Das presents a class-based perspective on the economic and political situation in contemporary India in a globalizing world. It deals with the specificities of India’s capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as poverty/inequality, geographically uneven development, technological change, and export-oriented, nature-dependent production. The book also deals with Left-led struggles in the form of the Naxalite/Maoist movement and trade-union strikes, and presents a non-sectarian Left critique of the Left. It also discusses the politics of the Right expressed as fascistic tendencies, and the question of what is to be done. The book applies abstract theoretical ideas to the concrete situation in India, which, in turn, inspires rethinking of theory. Das unabashedly shows the relevance of class theory that takes seriously the matter of oppression/domination of religious minorities and lower castes.

India Unbound

India Unbound
Author: Gurcharan Das
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2002-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385720742

India today is a vibrant free-market democracy, a nation well on its way to overcoming decades of widespread poverty. The nation’s rise is one of the great international stories of the late twentieth century, and in India Unbound the acclaimed columnist Gurcharan Das offers a sweeping economic history of India from independence to the new millennium. Das shows how India’s policies after 1947 condemned the nation to a hobbled economy until 1991, when the government instituted sweeping reforms that paved the way for extraordinary growth. Das traces these developments and tells the stories of the major players from Nehru through today. As the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India, Das offers a unique insider’s perspective and he deftly interweaves memoir with history, creating a book that is at once vigorously analytical and vividly written. Impassioned, erudite, and eminently readable, India Unbound is a must for anyone interested in the global economy and its future.

A People's History of India 14

A People's History of India 14
Author: Irfan Habib
Publisher: Tulika Books
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2018-04-22
Genre: Delhi (Sultanate)
ISBN: 9788193401576

This volume explores the economic and social history of India from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. It describes the agrarian order, urban economy, and trading world during the Delhi Sultanate, the subsequent period of political divisions, and conditions in the Vijayanagara Empire, which flourished during this period in south India.

Measuring Ancient Inequality

Measuring Ancient Inequality
Author: Branko Milanovi?
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2007
Genre: Economic history
ISBN:

Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and life expectancies as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial societies using what are known as social tables, stretching from the Roman Empire 14 AD, to Byzantium in 1000, to England in 1688, to Nueva Espąa around 1790, to China in 1880 and to British India in 1947. It applies two new concepts in making those assessments -- what we call the inequality possibility frontier and the inequality extraction ratio. Rather than simply offering measures of actual inequality, we compare the latter with the maximum feasible inequality (or surplus) that could have been extracted by the elite. The results, especially when compared with modern poor countries, give new insights in to the connection between inequality and economic development in the very long run.