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The Control of Fate and Fortune: The Origins of the Market Mentality in British Administrative Thought in South Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Neil Rabitoy
Neil Rabitoy
Affiliation:
California State University, Los Angeles
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Extract

One basic phenomenon characterized administrative development in the Bombay Presidency between 1800 and 1820: a fundamental transformation in the British administrative mentality. In brief, this transformation amounted to a shift, completed by 1813, from a cautious conservatism to one of innovation for the sake of administrative regularity. This shift can in part be explained as the natural product of the territorial cessions by the Marathas to the Bombay Government in 1802–3: Bombay ceased from that date to be solely a commercial presidency and became a government with territorial responsibility. It took about a decade for this new role to be fully accepted and to be reflected in the attitudes of Bombay administrators.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 737 - 764
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 See: Rabitoy, Neil, ‘Sovereignty, Profits, and Social Change: British Administration in Western India, 1800–1820,’ (Ph.D. diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1972), passim.Google Scholar Also, Rabitoy, , ‘System vs Expediency: The Reality of Land Revenue Administration in the Bombay Presidency, 1812–1820,’ Modern Asian Studies 9:4 (1975), 529–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarRabitoy, , ‘Administrative Modernization and the Bhats of British Gujarat, 1800–1820,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review XI, 1 (1974), 46–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The author is aware that the ideas of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith are not adequately described in either of these terms nor can they be adequately summarized in a single paragraph. This paper, however, does not examine those ideas but analyzes their application in a specific administrative setting within which they were understood essentially to mean that government should refrain from interfering in the natural operation of the marketplace.Google Scholar

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67 Ibid., 473. The object was to assist the Company's territories, all of which were to the north of Bombay.

68 Ibid., 481.

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119 This was Regulation I, 1814. See: MSA, RDD, 80:565–9, Rowles to Warden, 10 Sept. 1812. MSA, JDD, 66:595–6, Ct. of Cir. and App. to Newnham, 26 May 1813. MSA, JDD, 67:793–5, Rowles to Newnham, 26 June 1813.