This article explores the emergence, functioning and growth of markets in early modern Bengal and suggests the existence of decentralised interlinked exchange sites whose numbers increased over the course of the eighteenth century, with founders from diverse social groups and clearly delineated rules about establishment and resolution of conflict. Markets were both extensive as well as efficient with panoply of market regulations to ensure the smooth functioning of these sites. Investment made by different strata of society, guiding principles determining the spatial and temporal distribution of market places, the pervasive and robust service industry, internal consumption and mercantile penetration, in agriculture as well as other sectors, consolidated the process of commercialisation and shaped the provincial economy. A differentiated merchant community, with differing scales of operation, area and profit margin, serviced this economy. Both the indigenous and the early Company state were beneficiaries of the taxes but they were not the prime movers. The Nizamat of Bengal played a facilitating role in the smooth functioning of the market places, but the state even in the later part of the eighteenth century did not or could not act as the sole unilateral arbiter of all that was happening in the economic sphere.
Alam, Muzaffar and Seema Alavi. eds and trans., A European Experience of the Mughal Orient. The I’jaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters, 1773–1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier, New Delhi, 2001.
2.
Asiaticus, part 1–The Ecclesiastical, Chronological, and Historical Sketches Respecting Bengal, Calcutta, 1803.
3.
Banarasidas. The Ardhakathanaka, trans. Mukund Lath, Jaipur, 1981.
4.
Bayly, C.A.Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870, Indian edition, Delhi, 2000 (1st published 1983).
5.
Bayly, C.A.. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988.
6.
Bharatchandra. Annadamangal, ed. B. Bhattacharya, 3rd ed., Calcutta, 1969.
7.
Bhattacharya, S. ‘Regional Economy (1757–1857): Eastern India’, in Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai, eds, Cambridge Economic History of India, 1757–1970, Vol. II, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 270–95.
8.
Chakrabarty, Shubhra. ‘Collaboration and Resistance: Bengal Merchants and the English East India Company, 1757–1833’, Studies in History, vol. 10 (1), 1994, pp. 105–29.
9.
Chatterjee, Kumkum. Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India, Bihar: 1733–1820, Leiden, 1996.
10.
Curley, David. Poetry and History: Bengali Mangal-kabya and Social Change in Precolonial Bengal, Delhi, 2008.
11.
Dahl, Gunnar. Trade, Trust and Networks. Commercial Culture in Late Medieval Italy, Lund, 1998.
12.
Datta, K.K.Alivardi and His Times, Calcutta, 1939.
13.
Datta, Rajat. Society, Economy and the Market. Commercialization in Rural Bengal c. 1760–1800, Delhi, 2000.
14.
Datta, Rajat. ‘Merchants and Peasants. A study of Structure of local trade in Grain in late eighteenth century Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 23 (4), 1986, pp. 379–402.
15.
Ghosal, H.R.Economic Transition in the Bengal Presidency (1793–1833), Calcutta, 1966.
16.
Ghulam Hussain Salim. Riyazu-s-Salatin, trans. A. Salam, Delhi, 1975.
17.
Glazier, E.G.The District of Rungpore, Calcutta, 1914.
18.
Greif, Avner. ‘Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders’, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 49 (4), Dec. 1989, pp. 857–82.
19.
Guha,Sumit. Health and Population in South Asia—From Earliest Times to the Present, London, 2001.
20.
Hamilton, Walter. The East India Gazetteer; Containing Particular Descriptions of … Hindostan, and the Adjacent Countries, India Beyond the Ganges, and the Eastern Archipelago: With Sketches of the Manners … of their various inhabitants, (1st ed. 1815), London, 1828.
21.
Hardgrave Jr., Robert L. ‘An Early Portrayal of the Sikhs Two Eighteenth-century Etchings by Baltazard Solvyns’, International Journal of Punjab Studies, vol. 3 (2), 1996, pp. 213–27.
22.
Hossain, Hameeda. The Company Weavers of Bengal, Delhi, 1988.
23.
Laet, Joannes de. The Empire of the Great Mogol, A Translation of De Laet’s ‘Description of India and Fragment of Indian History’, trans., J.S. Hoyland and annotated S.N. Banerjee, Bombay, 1928.
24.
Langdon, John and James Masschaele. ‘Commercial Activity and Population Growth in Medieval England’, Past & Present, No. 190, February 2006, pp. 35–81.
25.
Legoux de Flaix, Alexandre. Essai Historique, Geographique et Politique Sur l’Indoustan, avec le Tableau de son Commerce, ce dernier pris dans une annee moyenne, depuis 1702 jusqu’en 1770, e′poque de la suppression du privilège de l’ancienne Compagnie des Indes Orientales, Tome I, II, Paris, 1807.
26.
Lufrano, Richard. Honourable Merchants. Commerce and Self-Cultivation in Late Imperial China, Honolulu, 1997.
27.
Marshall, P.J.Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Eastern India, 1740–1828, Cambridge, 1987.
28.
Marshall, P.J.. East Indian Fortunes. The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1976.
29.
Masschaele, James. Peasants, Merchants and Markets-Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150–1350, Basingstoke, 1997.
30.
McLeod, H.W.Historical Dictionary of Sikhism, Lanham, 1995.
31.
Miscellaneous Tracts- ‘On the Population of Bengal’, The Asiatic Annual Register, or A View of the History of Hindustan, and of the Politics, Commerce and Literature of Asia, For the year 1802, London, 1803, pp. 41–46.
32.
Mukherjee, Tilottama. ‘Urban Centres and Consumption Patterns in eighteenth-century Bengal’, in Pius Malekandathil and Yogesh Sharma edited, Cities in Medieval India (tentative title) forthcoming.
33.
Mukherjee, Tilottama. ‘Of Rivers and Roads: Transport Networks and Economy in eighteenth-century Bengal’, in Yogesh Sharma ed., Coastal Histories. Society and Ecology in pre-Modern India, Delhi, 2010, pp. 15–42.
34.
Mukherjee, Tilottama. ‘The Co-ordinating State and the Economy: The Nizamat in Eighteenth-century Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43 (2), 2009, pp. 389–436.
35.
Mukherjee, Tilottama. ‘The Economic Dimensions of Pilgrimage in Eighteenth-century Bengal’, in Bhaskarjyoti Basu, ed., Explorations in Economic and Social History, 1200–1900, Kolkata, 2008, pp. 195–232.
36.
Mukherjee, Tilottama. ‘Commodities, Trade and the Economy of Bengal: A Reassessment of the Early English East India Company State’, in S. Jeyaseela Stephen, ed., The Indian Trade at the Asian Frontier, Delhi, 2008, pp. 295–345.
37.
Muldrew, Craig. The Economy of Obligation. The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England, Basingstoke and London, 1998.
38.
National Archives of India (NAI), Home Department Public Branch (Home Public).
39.
NAI, Provincial Council of Revenue Dinajpur (microfilm).
40.
Offer, Avner. ‘Between the gift and the market: the economy of regard’, Economic History Review, Vol. 50 (3), 1997, 450–76.
41.
Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (OIOC), Bengal Law Council.
42.
OIOC, Bengal Revenue Consultations (BRC).
43.
Plattner, S. ‘Markets and Marketplaces’, in S. Plattner, ed., Economic Anthropology, rp. Stanford, California, 1991, pp. 171–208.
44.
Polyani, K. ‘The Economy as an Instituted Process’, in K. Polyani, H.W. Pearson and C.M. Arensberg, eds, Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, New Haven, 1957, 243–70.
45.
Ringrose, David R. ‘Capital Cities, Urbanization, and Modernization in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Urban History, vol. 24 (2), 1998, pp. 155–83.
46.
Schendel, W.V., ed., Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal, New Delhi, 1992.
47.
Sen, Dineshchandra, ed. compiled and trans., Eastern Bengal Ballads, Mymensing, Vols. I–IV, Calcutta, 1923–1932.
48.
Sen, Sudipta. Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and the Making of the Colonial Market Place, Philadelphia, 1998.
49.
Sheldon, Richard, Adrian Randall, Andrew Charlesworth and David Walsh. ‘Popular Protest and the Persistence of Customary Corn Measures: Resistance to the Winchester Bushel in the English West’, in Adrian Randall and Andrew Charlesworth, eds, Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland, Liverpool, 1996, pp. 25–45.
50.
Sketches of India; or Observations Descriptive of the Scenery &c. in Bengal: Written in India, in the Years 1811, 12, 13, 14; London, 1816.
51.
Skinner, G.W. ‘Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Parts I, II and III’, Journal of Asian Studies, Pt.1, Vol. 24(1), November 1964, pp. 3–44; 24 (2), February. 1965, pp. 195–228; 24 (3), May 1965, pp. 363–99.
52.
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. ed., Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, Delhi, 1990.
53.
Taylor, James. A Sketch of the Topography and Statistics of Dacca, Calcutta, 1840.
54.
Wallace, R.G.Memoirs of India: Comprising a Brief Geographical Account of the East Indies; A Succinct History of Hindostan, from the Most Early Ages, to the End of the Marquis of Hastings Administration in 1823, London, 1824.
55.
West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), Board of Customs.
56.
WBSA, Board of Revenue (BOR) at Fort William.
57.
WBSA, Board of Revenue (Miscellaneous) (BOR-Misc.)
58.
WBSA, Board of Revenue-Grain-Copies of Governor General in Council Revenue-Grain.
59.
WBSA, Board of Revenue-Police (BOR-Police).
60.
WBSA, Board of Revenue-Sayer (BOR-Sayer).
61.
WBSA, Board of Trade-Commercial (BOT-Comm.)
62.
WBSA, Board of Trade-Salt (BOT-Salt).
63.
WBSA, Committee of Revenue.
64.
WBSA, Comptroller of Salt and Collector of the Salt district-Copies of Correspondence, Statement and accounts relating to the revenue administration of the Salt district of Tamluk, Hijili and Mahisadal.
65.
WBSA, Comptrolling Committee of Revenue.
66.
WBSA, Judicial Criminal.
67.
WBSA, Provincial Council of Revenue Murshidabad, (PCRM).
68.
WBSA, Revenue Department-Sayer, (Revenue-Dept.-Sayer), Original Consultations (O.C.)
69.
Yang, Anand. Bazaar India—Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Gangetic Bihar, Berkeley and London, 1998.
