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From Medieval to Colonial: Markets, Territoriality and the Transition in Eighteenth Century Bengal

Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110 067, India

While the market as an economic institution in medieval India has received detailed and fruitful attention, the idea of a market as a terri torial site having its own jurisdictional and ownership considerations is yet to be developed in detail. This article analyses the positioning and functioning of this key institution in the transition which occurred in Bengal in the eighteenth century. It argues that medieval markets were highly contested zones where overlapping notions of authority made their structures extremely fluid. While landed proprietors and mer chants jostled with each other for control of this critical territorial space, the state remained an interested but benign onlooker, interfering only in the case of a potential breakdown. In contrast, in the early colo nial regime established by the English East India Company, a combina tion ofpeculiar taxonomic, hegemonic and mercantilist interests trans formed the existing relationships between the state and the market in India. The fluidity of territorial jurisdictions which characterised the anterior formation henceforth faded away.

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