Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T09:42:21.651Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Making Commercial Society in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2022

Vikram Visana
Affiliation:
University of Huddersfield
Get access

Summary

The Irish Home Rule question was catapulted to the top of the British political agenda in 1868 with William Ewart Gladstone making it a centrepiece of his election campaign. As a result, the Irish land question flourished in British public debate around the same time that Naoroji was conceptualizing his labour theory of value. It is hardly surprising that in Naoroji's comparative political economy, British commentary on the condition of Ireland was an ever-present foil to the situation in India. Moreover, the elite commentary on Irish agrarian distress, tenancy rights and British rule was an important historical antecedent to Naoroji's own concerns since questions of Irish proprietary right resembled those of the subcontinent. Nevertheless, Naoroji parted ways with major policy interventions on the Irish question by influential pundits like J. S. Mill who initially advocated land nationalization, switching later to a doctrine of owner-occupation, or persisted with archaic economic doctrines like that of the wage fund. Sensitive to the Irish debate but not repeating it, Naoroji charted his own vision for commercial society that reinstated natural justice by minimizing the colonial state's financial monopoly.

By the late 1880s, Naoroji was in regular correspondence with Irish Land Leaguers like Michael Davitt, co-operating with him in movements for land reform in England. However, it was the economic writings of individuals who linked land issues with pauperization in the United Kingdom that bear striking resemblance to Naoroji's own critique, and the most significant among these was Henry Fawcett, with whom Naoroji was well acquainted since the 1860s. In many ways, Fawcett's views about Irish tenant farmers echoed those of his intellectual mentor, J. S. Mill, and the student of his political economy, J. E. Cairnes. Fixity of tenure and the right of the labourer to a fair share of the value he had produced featured prominently in these discussions. Mill also castigated absentee landlords for facilitating a system of unilateral transfers from Ireland to Britain that resulted in deteriorating terms of trade and an increase in the cost of Irish imports – a paradigm Naoroji cited in his own drain theory. Consequently, in 1868 Mill advocated land nationalization in Ireland, but by 1870 this was replaced by a gradual transfer of land to a productive yeomanry of co-operative farmers who could reap rewards proportional to their investment and labour.

Type
Chapter
Information
Uncivil Liberalism
Labour, Capital and Commercial Society in Dadabhai Naoroji's Political Thought
, pp. 123 - 149
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×