A Century of Change- Caste and Irrigated Lands in Tamilnadu 1860s-1970s (Manohar Classics)

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This volume explores more than a century of agrarian change in the irrigated areas of Tamilnadu since the 1860s. The author presents a systematic analysis of Settlement Registers for 26 villages compiled at 30-year intervals between 1865 and 1925. The computer-processed data enables the author to trace micro-changes in caste-wise and size-wise distribution of landholdings of each village.

Based on these data the author challenges the recent arguments that tend to deny structural changes in rural society in terms of landholdings under British rule. He identifies two different trends at work. The first was the gradual deterioration of the pattern of landownership characterised by the dominance of higher-caste landowners. This reflected a change in agriculture towards smaller farms, a tendency more or less held in common with agrarian developments in East Asia. The second trend witnessed was the growing stratification of the non-Brahman population as a result of the colonial transformation of Indian society.

The intensification of agricultural practices, emigration, and the com-mercialisation of agriculture are identified as the main factors leading to this transformation. Special attention is paid to the increasing emancipation of lower-caste labourers and the acquisition of small plots of land by some of them. Changes observed between the 1950s and 1970s are reconsidered in this historical context.

Haruka Yanagisawa was Professor of Indian Economic History at the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. His publications include Studies in the Socio-Economic History of South India (in Japanese), Socio-Economic Changes in a Village in the Paddy Cultivating Area in South India, and papers in various journals. He has edited with P. Robb and K. Sugihara Local Agrarian Societies in Colonial India. He passed away in April 2015.

This study attempts to clarify the socio-economic changes that occurred in South Indian agrarian society in the period between the 1860s and the 1970s, focussing on the irrigated areas of Tiruchirapalli and other Tamil districts.

The work is based on archival documents, in particular computer-processed data from the village settlement registers for 26 villages in Tiruchirapalli district, and data collected during my field survey of vil-lages in this district. The settlement registers were collected and computer-processed jointly with Professor Tsukasa Mizushima. I have benefited greatly through his suggestions and co-operation and grate-fully thank him for permitting me to use the data from the settlement registers. My field survey was undertaken as part of a research project organized by the late Professor Tadahiko Hara, to whom I am deeply grateful. Both the data processing work and the fieldwork were funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan. Mitsubishi Foundation also supported my study of settlement registers. I am grateful to these organisations.

I was very fortunate to have many excellent teachers, colleagues and friends who supported and encouraged my study of South Indian economic history. In particularly, I received not only intellectual guidance but also emotional and practical support from Professor Mikio Sumiya, who was my supervisor during my years as an economics student at the University of Tokyo. I have benefited enormously from the fertile climate of debate that exists in the Institute of Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo, where I have been working since 1983. A special debt is due to Professor Toni Matsui and Professor Toshio Yamazaki, who constantly supported the work's development.