Stokes Eric. The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. — 308 p.These twelve essays explore the nature of south Asian agrarian society and examine the extent to which it changed during the period of British rule. The central focus of the book is directed to peasant agitation and violence and four of the studies look at the agrarian explosion that formed the background to the 1857 Mutiny. The essays give a coherent historical treatment of the Indian peasant world, and the paperback edition of this successful book will be of interest to the student of peasant studies and to the sociologist as well as to development economists and agronomists generally.The first century of British colonial rule: social revolution or social stagnation?Privileged land tenure in village India in the early nineteenth centuryAgrarian society and the Pax Britannica in northern India in the early nineteenth centuryThe land revenue systems of the North-Western Provinces and Bombay Deccan 1830-80: ideology and the official mindTraditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nationalism: the context of the 1857 Mutiny RebellionNawab Walidad Khan and the 1857 Struggle in the Bulandshahr districtRural revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: a study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districtsTraditional elites in the Great Rebellion of 1857: some aspects of rural revolt in the upper and central DoabThe structure of landholding in Uttar Pradesh 1860?1948Dynamism and enervation in North Indian agriculture: the historical dimension