¹ Morris, M. D. and Stein, Burton, “The Economic History of India: A Bibliographic Essay,” The Journal Of Economic History, XXI (06 1961), 182–183, 192 if.; andGoogle ScholarMorris, M. D., “Towards a Reinterpretation of Nineteenth Century Indian Economic History,” Journal Of Economic History, XXIII (12. 1963), 607–8Google Scholar.

² Nair, Kusum, Blossoms in the Dust (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), particularly pp. 192–93.Google Scholar

³ Anstey, Vera, The Economic Development of India (3d. ed.; London: Longmans Green and Company, 1936), p. 47.Google Scholar

⁴ Dubois, J. A., Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Beauchamp, Henry K., ed. (3d. ed.; Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1906), pp. 5, 96-97.Google Scholar

⁵ Trevelyan, Charles E., On the Education of the People of India (London: 1838), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

⁶ Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), pp. 19–25.Google Scholar

⁷ Weber, Max, The Religion of India. Translated and edited by Gerth, H. H. and Martindale, D.. (Glencoe, I11.: The Free Press, 1958), pp. 111, 112.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., p. 325. Weber quoted with obvious approval the judgment of “some eminent English students of the land” that even though “the penetration of Indian society by [British] capitalistic interests is already so extensive that they can no longer be eliminated …, the removal of the thin conquering strata of Europeans and the Pax Britannica enforced by them would open wide the life and death struggles of inimical castes, confessions, and tribes; the old feudal robber romanticism of the Indian Middle Ages would again break forth” (ibid).

⁹ Ibid., pp. 18–20.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 55; he very explicitly accepts the four-class varna scheme as the “picture of historical social reality.” While most modern descriptions see the caste system fragmented into many more units than this, the historical consequences seem to be about the same as those described by Weber. See, for example, Kapp, K. William, Hindu Culture, Economic Development and Economic Planning in India (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1963), ch. iiGoogle Scholar. Kapp stresses the psychological manifestations and consequences. Ibid., chs. i-iii. , Weber, in Religion of India, pp. 339–40, explicitly denies the usefulness of a psychological analysis of the problemGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ From Basham's, A. L. translation, The Wonder That Was India (London: Sidg-wick and Jackson, 1954), p. 341Google Scholar.

¹² , Kapp, Hindu Culture, p. 16.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., pp. 46–47.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 17. This last consequence seems to be somewhat at odds with the view earlier mentioned that the great performance gap between South Asian and Western economic systems manifested itself only after about 1750. There are a number of possible interpretations of this. The most popular seems to be based on the assumption of “the strong preference of Hindu wealth for commercial investment.…” ( , Weber, Religion of India, p. 117).Google Scholar Within the varna system there is provision for commercial groups, Vaisyas, who would be vigorously responsive to traditional types of investment opportunity but were not at all responsive to the much more productive (but novel) investment opportunities in the modem industrial sector.

¹⁵ , Weber, Religion of India, p. 99.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 11–123. See, also, Kapp, pp. 46 ff.

¹⁷ , Weber, Religion of India, passim. Cf. particularly pp. 102–117, 334 ff; Kapp, Hindu Culture, chs. i-iii; and Nair, Blossoms, particularly the comment about traditional agricultural castes, pp. 190–91. See, also,Google ScholarLamb, Helen B., “The ‘State’ and Economic Development in India,” in Simon Kuznets, Moore, Wilbert E., and Spengler, Joseph, eds., Economic Growth: Brazil, India, Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1955), p. 479Google Scholar.

¹⁸ , Weber, Religion of India; pp. 104–5.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid., particularly p. 114. Weber suggests that the one advantage to entrepreneurs “is that the caste division of workers has so far made any trade union organization and any real ‘strike’ impossible.”

²⁰ For a general survey of the state of the field of South Asian economic history, see Morris and Stein, “Economic History,” pp. 179–207. I know of only one explicit attempt to relate the Hindu value system to economic change through time: Mishra, V., Hinduism and Economic Growth (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1962). The result is unsatisfactoryGoogle Scholar.

²¹ , Morris, “Reinterpretation,” pp. 606–18. For this reason alone, it strikes me that any attempt to compare South Asian economic performance with that of Britain or Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is far from the mark.Google Scholar

²² This ignores for the time bein g the fact that each varna necessarily had its distinctive set of values associated with and appropriate to its dharma.

²³ This is suggested in Brown, W. Norman, “Traditional Culture and Modem Developments in India,” Report of the Xlih International Congress of the Historical Sciences, Stockholm, 1960 (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1960), particularly pp. 129–35Google Scholar.

²⁴ , Weber, Religion of India, pp. 326–28. See, also,Google ScholarSrinivas, M. N., Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

²⁵ , Basham, Wonder That Was India, ch. vii, particularly pp. 322 and 340 ff., suggests some of the possibilities of reinterpretation. The point about philosophical diversity becomes even more relevant when we recall that Weber's intellectual system usually derived its distinctive results from relatively minor ideological differences, e.g., differences among the various Protestant sects or between Protestantism and Catholicism. See alsoGoogle ScholarLevy, Marion J. Jr, “Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, II (10. 1953), 161–97, for the significance of the notion of small differencesGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ , Weber, Religion of India, pp. 9 ff.; andGoogle ScholarSinger, M., “The Social Organization of Indian Civilization,” Diogenes (Winter, 1964), 84–119.Google Scholar, Srinivas, Social Change, p. 5, referring to the Brahmanical varna theology, commented: “The claims which the Brahmans made for themselves and their view of the caste hierarchy are understandable, but not so the fact that many scholars, Indian as well as foreign, have regarded them as representations of historical reality.” Cf.Google Scholar, Srinivas, Social Change, pp. 3 ffGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ I stress my doubt about the slowness of Indian economic growth in the nineteenth century. There have been no very helpful studies of the period. The rate of growth (if any) is unknown but a reasonable case can be made for rather substantial per capita growth between 1800 and 1914. The counterargument is based on the somewhat dubious assumption that the level of Indian economic performance about 1700–1750 was approximately equal to that in Western Europe. For a brief examination of these issues, see Morris, “Reinterpretation.”

But even if, when ultimately compiled, all-India data would confirm the more traditional view that no per capita growth occurred during the nineteenth century, one would still have to avoid the danger arising out of the aggregation procedure. (For an example of the importance of regional diversity, see the effects of Greater Bengal on the all-India results in Blyn's, G.Agricultural Trends in India, 1891–1947: Output, Availability, and Productivity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966], pp. 219 ff.). It is certainly clear on the basis of the qualitative data that some regions–the Punjab, Assam, and, most probably, the Gujarat–grew very rapidly. If I am correctabout this, we have a level of economic performance superior to man y areas of Europe, Latin America, and Africa during the same period. Obviously, this would raise some very serious doubts about the meaningfulness of the “Hindu values” discussion. But even if such comparison cannot be made, the fact that there were very distinct variations in the rates of economic growth between one part of India and another would still raise very substantial issues. In this event one could possibly rationalize diverse regional economic performance with the notion of a “Hindu” value system by referring to the proposition that each varna had its specific dharma. If one could relate regions of more rapid expansion with higher proportions of Vaisyas in the population, the differences might just be justifiable. This is what Weber, in Religion of India, pp. 91–92, seems to have had in mind. At any rate, an obvious early task for scholars interested in South Asian economic history is an attempt to derive some estimates of rates of growth by region for the nineteenth centuryCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Bose, Arun, “Foreign Capital,” in Singh, V. B., ed., Economic History of India: 1857–1956 (Bombay: Allied Publishers Private Limited, 1965), pp. 492 ff. See alsoGoogle ScholarJenks, L. H., The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), pp. 206 ff.; andGoogle ScholarBuchanan, D. H., The Development of Capitalistic Enterprise in India (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934), pp. 148 ffGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Kidron, Michael, Foreign Investments in India (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 3.Google Scholar

³⁰ , Buchanan, Development, p. 152.Google Scholar

³¹ This is hinted at by Anstey, Vera, “Economic Development,” in O'Malley, L. S. S., ed., Modern India and the West (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 272; and byGoogle Scholar, Buchanan, Development, p. 146Google Scholar.

It is worth mentioning that the discussions of Indian investment behavior during the nineteenth century almost invariably neglect the matter of comparative rates of return between one form of investment and another. This is the case whether the stress is on Indian preference for investment in commerce rather than industry or in land rather than in industry. The same failure to consider the nature of alternative opportunities and rates of return appears in the discussions of the purported unwillingness of Indians to shift from literary to technical education in the later nineteenth century. See Crane, Robert I., “Technical Education and Economic Development,” in Anderson, C. A. and Bowman, M. J., eds., Education and Economic Development (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1965), pp. 167–201. Still the best discussion of this entire problem isGoogle ScholarAubrey, Henry G., “Industrial Investment Decisions: A Comparative Analysis,” Journal Of Economic History, XV (12. 1955), 335–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a useful essay directly on the Indian situation see Bhatta-charya, S., “Cultural and Social Constraints on Technological Innovation and Economic Development: Some Case Studies,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review, III (09. 1966), 240–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² For the history of jute and cotton industries, see Buchanan, Development, chs. x and xi; and Mehta, S. C., The Cotton Mills of India, 1854–1954 (Bombay: The Textile Association [India], 1954). For the estimate of India's role in world cotton manufacturing, seeGoogle Scholar, Anstey, Economic Development, p. 262. For a brief comment on investment in the Bombay industry, seeGoogle ScholarMorris, M. D., The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 22 ff. For an example of the caution of British investors, see the report by John Robertson reproduced in Bombay Millowners' Association, Report of the Bombay Millowners' Association for the Years 1875 and 1875–76Google Scholar.

British prudence showed itself not only in the cotton textile industry. In the steel industry, also, it was native enterprise that took on the task. See Johnson, William A., The Steel Industry of India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 243–50 and references found there. See, also,CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Kidron, Foreign Investments, p. 41Google Scholar.

³³ Aubrey, Investment Decisions.

³⁴ , Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force, pp. 31–38Google Scholar and passim. The notion is widespread that Indians were technically and organizationally entirely dependent on Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But if one examines the Indian cotton textile industry, it becomes obvious that very early and in important ways the Indians developed their own solutions that took them down independent paths. Of course, as one would expect, labor-to-equipment ratios were quite different than those in Lancashire. But there were other substantive differences. Unlike Manchester, the Indian mills very quickly shifted out of mule and into ring spindles. Almost from the beginning of their history they integrated spinning and weaving departments, differing here, too, from British practice. And of course, the managing agency device was a different technique for administering the companies than was employed in Britain.

³⁵ , Weber, Religion of India, particularly pp. 91–92, 192–204, and 314–16.Google Scholar

³⁸ , Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force, pp. 15–16. While it is popular to explain the situation in Bengal by reference to imperial policy, this doesn't explain why the response seems to have been different on the two sides of the subcontinent.Google Scholar

³⁷ See, for example, Sinha, N. C., Studies In Indo-British Economy A Hundred Years Ago (Calcutta: A. Mukerjee & Co., 1946), pp. 27–46. The fact that certain kinds of investments, as in modern factories, might ultimately have yielded some derivative benefits, some socioeconomic externalities, is no reason to imply either that the native entrepreneur was forced to choose rural investments or that his system of values made him unresponsive to the modern investments. It merely suggests that knowledge was not perfect. But this is not a defect only of the Hindu value systemGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ , Buchanan, Development, p. 146, suggests this same possibility. It can, of course, be argued that the phenomenon flowed from patterns of discrimination against native enterprisers in the modern sector. While this possibility cannot be ignored, the answer will only be found when scholars have studied the rates of return from rural investments in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

³⁹ Unfortunately, space limitations force me to advance my argument in cruder form than I would like. While my proposition possibly explains the differences that distinguish Gujarat from Bengal, it does not immediately respond to the claim that it was Marwaris rather than Bengalis who moved in on the expanding rural opportunities of the nineteenth century. All I can say at this point is that categories such as “Bengali” and “Marwari” are far too gross to be analytically useful. My casual examination of some relevant data leaves me with the impression that when the details inherent in these categories are properly reconsidered, we will uncover a much different story than is now usually accepted.

⁴⁰ Narain, Dharm, The Impact of Trice Movements on Areas Under Selected Crops in India 1900–1939 (Cambridge, [Eng.]: At the University Press, 1965); andGoogle Scholar, Morris, “Reinterpretation,” p. 612Google Scholar.

⁴¹ , Nair, Blossoms, pp. 190–91.Google Scholar

⁴² , Weber, Religion of India, p. 114.Google Scholar

⁴³ Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force ; Morris, M. D., “The Labo. Market in India,” in Moore, W. E. and Feldman, A. S., eds., Labor Commitment an Social Change in Developing Areas (New York: Social Science Research Council. 1960), pp. 173–200Google Scholar; and Morris, M. D., “Order and Disorder in the Labour Force. The Jamshedpur Crisis of 1958,” Economic Weekly, 11 1, 1958, pp. 1387–95Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ See Shah, A. M., “Social Anthropology and the Study of Historical Societies,” The Economic Weekly (Special Number), July 1959, p. 959.Google Scholar I have examined a good deal of the travel literature and the records of the European companies that traded in India after 1600. The references to caste are amazingly few. In fact, most of them strike me as being occupationa l designations rather than caste references. It is true that these reporters were not trained social scientists. Nevertheless, one would assume that had caste been a decisive factor affecting their economi c relationships it would have been commented upon. The silence of the records is, I suggest, analytically significant.

The only study I kno w of that seems to deal specifically with cast e in history is Leon Sinder, Caste Instability in Moghul India (Seoul, Korea: Chung-ang University, 1964). Unfortunately, I have bee n unable t o obtai n a copy of it.

⁴⁵ Karve, Irawati, “What is Caste?” The Economic Weekly, X (01., Mar., and July 1958), 125–38Google Scholar, 401–07, 881–88; and Ibid., XI (Jan. 1959), 149–63; , Srinivas, Social Change, pp. 3–9; and D. R. Gadgil, “Notes on the Rise of the Business Communities in India,” a mimeographed memorandum prepared for the Institute of Pacific Relations, April 1951. Gadgil states (p. v) “I t is my belief that the bulk of positions of administrative responsibility and especially positions of profit in an Indian business are held by persons belonging to the sub-caste [jati] of its owner or managing agent. The sub-caste thus tends to determine, in a large measure, the distribution of wealth and economic power.” Weber recognized that each varna category incorporated many subgroups. He knew, for example, that there were socially degraded Brahman subcastes. See, especially,Google Scholar, Weber, Religion of India, pp. 9 ff. However, his analysis required that these distinctions be ignoredGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ Morris, M. D., “Caste and the Evolution of the Industrial Workforce in India,. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CIV (04. 1960), 124–33; andGoogle Scholar, Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force, pp. 71–83Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Pandit, D. P., “Creative Response in Indian Economy: A Regional Analysis,” The Economic Weekly, IX (02. 23 and Mar. 2, 1957), 283–86, 315–17;Google ScholarAcharya, Hemlata, “Creative Response in Indian Economy: A Comment,” The Economic Weekly, IX (02. 27, 1957), 547–49; andGoogle ScholarSpodek, Howard, “The ‘Manchesterisation’ of Ahmedabad,” The Economic Weekly, XVII (03. 13, 1965), 483–90. These three references refer to Brahmans, Rajputs, Patidars, Bhatias, Patels, Jains, Kapol Banias, Muslims, and Parsis, as well as others, all involved in the Abmedabad cotton textile industry. The same phenomenon can be traced in Bombay. See, for a beginning,Google ScholarRutnagar, S. M., Bombay Industries: The Cotton Mills (Bombay: The Indian Textile Journal Limited, 1927)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Fox, Richard G., “Family, Caste, and Commerce in a North Indian Market Town,”Economic Development and Cultural Change, XV (04. 1967), 297–314, particularly pp. 297, 301, 304–8. My comments are not necessarily intended as a reflection on Fox's article. His purposes may have been satisfied by the Bania cate-fory he used. Iavior are obviously not explicitly linked with any notion of caste that is operation- am merely trying to point out that economic relationships and be-ally meaningful to the economic historian.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁹ Walchand Diamond Jubilee Commemoration Volume (Bombay: Published by B. D. Sardesai, Walchand Diamond Jubilee Celebration Committee, 1942), pp. 3 ft.Google Scholar It is interesting to mention that while the women of the family still speak Gujarati and dress in Gujarati style, the male member s have become culturally Maharashtrian. Ibid., pp. 4–5.

⁵⁰ Harris, F. R., Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (2d. ed.; Bombay: Blackie & Son, 1958), ch. i. There is a tendency to assume that Parsis were particularly cosmopolitan. What is neglected is the fact that they had to be cosmopolitan with someone! It is my own impression that the economic significance of Parsis as a group has been exaggerated. Among the Parsis only a few families are decisive. If their role is important, it is more a reflection of the small scale of economic action in India than of any specific system of values. Otherwise, one has difficulty explaining why the Parsis, so influential in Bombay, were insignificant in Ahmedabad.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See references in footnote 43, above.

⁵² , Buchanan, Development, p. 113, makes specific reference to a case in which part of a weaver jati took over merchant functions. The phenomenon, which seems to have occurred in many other occupations, is important for at least two reasons. It makes clear that handicraft workers were not all bein g driven into the state of landless labor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also reveals a proces s of economic differentiation not unlike that which occurred in Europe and suggests the possibility that artisans, after moving into commerce, might well have functioned as merchant manufacturers with all the developmental possibilities inherent in such a.process. I am convinced that there was a good deal of modern activity built up in the rural sector in this way in the last 150 years. But we will only be able to find out what happened when scholars give up the notion that planting, harvesting, and money -lending were the only activities occurring in the rural sector. Buchanan, in Development, chs. v-vii, says more about these possibilities than almost any other source I know.Google Scholar

⁵³ , Nair, in Blossoms, pp.xviii–xix, ha s a passage which indicates some of the cate -gorical confusions which exist in the literature and which tend to blur the presence of change. “The words ‘cultivator’ and ‘agriculturist’ do not imply that the peasant necessarily tills the land himself. They may merely indicate that he lives mainly by income from agriculture. Then there are certain communities in India that are agriculturist by caste. They are like other professional castes, such as those of blacksmiths or weavers. The majority of the people who actually work on the land belong to what are known as the scheduled castes of Harijans.”Google Scholar