NCERT Book Class 12 History Chapter 9 Colonialism and the Countryside

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Colonialism and the
THEME Countryside
NINE Explor ing Of
Exploring Offf icial Ar
Arcchiv es
hives

In this chapter you will see what
colonial rule meant to those who lived
in the countryside. You will meet the
zamindars of Bengal, travel to the
Rajmahal hills where the Paharias
and the Santhals lived, and then move
west to the Deccan. You will look at
the way the English East India
Company (E.I.C.) established its raj in
the countryside, implemented its
revenue policies, what these policies
meant to different sections of people,
and how they changed everyday lives.
Laws introduced by the state
have consequences for people: they
determine to an extent who grows
richer and who poorer, who acquires
new land and who loses the land they
have lived on, where peasants go
when they need money. As you will see,
however, people were not only subject
to the working of laws, they also
resisted the law by acting according to
what they believed to be just. In doing
so people defined the way in which
laws operated, thereby modifying their
consequences.
You will also come to know about
the sources that tell us about these
histories, and the problems historians
face in interpreting them. You will read
about revenue records and surveys,
journals and accounts left by surveyors Fig. 9.1
and travellers, and reports produced Cotton being carried from the village to the mandi,
by enquiry commissions. Illustrated London News, 20 April 1861