This book chronicles how the concept of organizing people to serve economic ends emerged in early modern and colonial India. It examines rules of cooperation, why people decided to join forces, how disputes were settled, and how cooperative communities became increasingly unstable in more modern times. It focuses on five dimensions: actor, agent, time, purpose, and region. The leading actors are peasants, labourers, artisans, merchants/bankers, and the states. The
rules of cooperation that formed inside communities of merchants and others were respected by the states. However, these rules would eventually become unstable due to the integration of India within a global-industrial economy and the introduction of a new rule of law in the old guise of 'custom'. As a
result, the endogamous guild, a kind of collective that used marriage rules to secure cooperative ties, became weaker, to be supplanted by other forms of organization. Collectives controlled property, managed resources, supplied training, and conducted negotiations. The regional angle is important because regions differed on the composition of enterprise, and globalization and colonialism unfolded unevenly across space. The book presents an economic history of institutional change in South
Asia.
- ISBN10 0199486808
- ISBN13 9780199486809
- Publish Date 12 April 2018 (first published 25 March 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Oxford University Press
- Edition 2nd Revised edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 268
- Language English