Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885-1947 by Imran Ali

Review by: Ainslie T. Embree
Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 566-567
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2163913
Accessed: 08-11-2017 10:45 UTC

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 566 Reviews of Books
Banks appear to have had more resilience than is
suggested here. Certainly they were affected by crises,
and certainly the banks may have been less generous to
the Indian mercantile community than they were to
Europeans during periods of stringency. Many would
appear, however, to have been like bamboos, able to
bend before a prevailing wind but then spring back
again. The author has interpreted his remit very nar-
rowly; there is only one general survey chapter in each
part. Because the banks were products of the Anglo-
Indian community and because it was that community
that substantially constituted the banks' clientele, the
banks did affect to some degree the well-developed
indigenous banking system. As Bagchi points out, as
early as 1817 loans by the Bank of Bengal were taken
up by the Calcutta bazaar and lent again. Such connec-
tions are, however, only considered in passing, so the
wider influence and penetration of these banks is
difficult to assess. Similarly, the workings of internal
exchanges arising out of regional markets and inter-
regional transfers are only occasionally discussed in
some depth, for example, the effect when the banks
secured residents' treasury business in the princely
states and when the Bank of Bengal in Bombay estab-
lished an agency in Bombay. This particularly narrow
definition of a business historian's remit has probably
resulted in some lost opportunities for an Indian view
of the further commercialization and monetization of
the subcontinent during the first three-quarters of the
nineteenth century. forming like almost everything else" (p. 274). This
P. L. COTTRELL volume adds little to our knowledge of nineteenth-
University of Leicester
century Punjab. It does present a coherent recital of
J. ROYAL ROSEBERRY iII. Imperial Rule in Punjab: The
Conquest and Administration of Multan, 1818-1881. Riv-
erdale, Md.: Riverdale. 1987. Pp. 285. $35.00.
J. Royal Roseberry III brings us a study of the past that
seems to be of that past. The subjects chosen for
discussion, the concepts and stereotypes that appear,
and even the vocabulary are those of the British-Indian
empire. The work creates the impression that one is
reading a document from another era, an impression
that is strengthened by a generous use of quotations. In
addition, the author seems to be unable to step beyond
the world of the colonial official and add a degree of
historical perspective expected of a trained scholar.
The sources used here contribute to the vision pre-
sented. They are almost exclusively from British gov-
ernment records, standard histories, letters from one
official to another, diaries, and memoirs. There is only
a handful of citations from the works of contemporary
South Asian historians and a complete lack of Urdu
literature produced by the citizens of Multan. This
deficiency is most apparent in the last chapter, which
deals with communal conflict in the 1880s. An explo-
ration of indigenous literature would have broadened
this study beyond the world as seen through British
eyes and British perceptions. There is as well a lack of
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any analytical structure that might help place the
events discussed in perspective.
This book is a descriptive political-administrative
history. The author begins his fourteen chapters with
an introduction followed by a discussion of the admin-
istrations of Diwan Sawan Mal and his son Diwan
Mulraj, who governed semi-independently within the
Sikh kingdom. The revolt of 1848-49 and Multan's
conquest by the British are examined next. Then the
author devotes two chapters to initial British adminis-
trative efforts with an emphasis on land revenue and
irrigation. Chapter nine deals with the mutiny of 1857
and is followed by two chapters that again examine
issues of administration, particularly land revenue and
the judiciary. The next two chapters focus on the
acquisition of peasant land by money lenders and on
questions concerning the land tax. Finally, there is a
chapter on the communal conflicts of 1880-81 and a
five-page conclusion that deals only with the preceding
chapter. There is no attempt to draw together the
entire volume nor to relate events in Multan to the
broader world of imperial history.
The reader is left with a final thought in relation to
the question of communal relations: "To close on a less
somber note, there might be some comfort for the
world in the alacrity with which the rank and file of
riot-torn Multan slipped back into their old pattern of
live and let live. This could indicate that when enough
is riding on it peaceful coexistence becomes habit
Multan's administrative and political history with some
discussion of social groupings and communal relations.
For individuals who wish an introduction to the Mul-
tan's history from 1818 to 1881, this study will provide
it, but beyond that its uses are limited.
KENNETH W. JONES
Kansas State University
IMRAN ALI. The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885-1947.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1988. Pp. ix,
264. $49.50.
This book is a carefully documented study of the
development and impact of canal irrigation during
British rule in what is now Pakistan. Between 1885 and
the creation of Pakistan in 1947, about eleven million
acres in the great stretch of territory between the Beas
and Satlej rivers and the Jhelum were supplied with
water from the rivers, making it one of the most
productive agricultural regions of northern India. Ir-
rigation had, of course, been common in other parts of
the Indian subcontinent throughout history, but almost
always it had been a process of bringing water to
already settled land with the intention of improving
existing agriculture and supplementing the monsoon
rainfall. The situation in western Punjab was quite
different. The areas between the rivers, known as doabs,

received little rain, and, because through the centuries
the action of the rivers had made them much higher
than the river beds, small-scale irrigation was not
possible. Much of the region was largely uncultivated
wasteland', sparsely inhabited by a seminomadic popu-
lation of cattle and camel graziers. After water was
made available through the vast system of canals from
the rivers, the land was brought under cultivation, not
by the local people but by colonists from elsewhere in
the Punjab who were encouraged, through various
government schemes, to settle in the area. The "canal
colonies," as they were known, were of great impor-
tance to the British in the Punjab, as they are to their
successors, the Pakistanis, and beyond this, Imran Ali
argues, their impact on the area provides insights into
how a region could undergo significant economic
growth and not only remain backward but also acquire
"through the very process of growth further structural
resistances to growth" (p. vi).
This is an important and intriguing concept, but,
unfortunately, the author's treatment of it is flawed by
simplistic notions about the nature of power and the
political process. He appears to believe not only that
the British wanted to change the social and economic
structure of India but also that they should have done
so and could have if they had not been anxious to
maintain their power and fearful that change might
have undermined their rule. Such contradictions in
historical understanding surface frequently, but they
do not prevent the presentation of a remarkably lucid
account of the interplay of government policy and
private interest.
The nine canal colonies were created over a period
of forty years (although the last, Nili Bar, was not
completed until the 1940s) with methods of coloniza-
tion that differed from area to area, but one of the
values of Ali's book is that, although he indicates these
differences, he is able to explicate the general trends
and patterns of settlement. Some of the land was sold at
auctions; some was given for military service; some
went as awards for meritorious service in the bureauc-
racy; and some grants went to great families who had
proved their loyalty to the government during the 1857
uprising. A spectacular example was the grant of
nearly eight thousand acres in one colony to Sir Khem
Singh Bedi, but lesser grants assured the continuing
loyalty of the old landed elites. Ali at times gives the
impression that this policy was a departure, but it was,
of course, the practice that had been followed by the
Mughals, the predecessors of the British. Ali makes the
interesting point that this process of what he calls
"entrenchment" had great significance for Indian po-
litical history in the twentieth century. In the canal
colonies, he argues, the state became more deeply
entrenched in economic life than it did elsewhere in
India, while at the same time the owners of the newly
settled lands regarded the British as their benefactors.
In other areas of India, he argues, the bourgeoisie
became deeply involved in the nationalist movement
through their great political organizations, the Indian
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Asia 567
National Congress and the Muslim League, because
they were not economically or socially dependent on
the state as were their counterparts in Punjab. He cites
as examples the support of the government by the
great Nun, Tiwana, and Daulatana families and their
opposition to nationalist politics, whether of the con-
gress or league variety, as the result of canal colony
land grants. There is no doubt a great deal of truth in
this view, but again Ali overemphasizes the power of
the British and does not recognize the special nature of
the landowners in the region in contrast to other areas
of India.
It is a matter of regret that a book that probes, with
such energy and learning, the relationship and atti-
tudes of various groups-peasants, landless laborers,
servicemen, and, above all, the landed elites-to the
imperial power depends so exclusively on its official
records. This is, admittedly, a common characteristic of
works on modern South Asia, even by the so-called
subaltern historians who seek to show the linkages
between activity and consciousness, and, because Ali
has focused his study largely on government policy,
this use of official sources can perhaps be justified.
Surely at least some of the landed families, however,
have documents and papers that might demonstrate
the reality behind Ali's reading of their role, even
though we are forced to see the rest of the population
refracted through official documents.
AINSLIE T. EMBREE
Columbia University
TAPAN RAYCHAUDHURI. Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions
of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal. Delhi: Oxford
University Press. 1988. Pp. xviii, 369.
This book discusses how European civilization was
perceived by three leading late nineteenth-century
Bengali intellectuals. The three are Bhudev Mukho-
padhyay (1827-1894), an orthodox Hindu and a pro-
lific essayist; Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-
1894), the foremost Bengali novelist of his day; and
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), the Hindu mission-
ary to the West. Why choose these three instead of
three others? According to Tapan Raychaudhuri, their
works are informed, sophisticated, and perceptive; the
three were similar in background but quite different in
their evaluations of Western civilization; and they were
highly influential among their countrymen.
Among Asians, Bengalis had the longest and most
intimate encounter with the West. In the nineteenth
century that encounter led to creative syntheses in
religion, the arts, and political and social attitudes that
prepared the ground for Indian nationhood. Ray-
chaudhuri begins with a succinct intellectual history
of nineteenth-century Bengal. He then devotes a
lengthy chapter to each of his three thinkers. Each
chapter includes a biographical sketch and a brief
discussion of the thinker's major writings on the West
and the world.