Comprehensive and detailed, a wonderful resource. Each topic covered (such as urban life, international trade, coinage, city organization, employment Comprehensive and detailed, a wonderful resource. Each topic covered (such as urban life, international trade, coinage, city organization, employment structure, urban lifestyle, administrative techniques, military organization, tax structure, agricultural production, prices, etc) is discussed from a three-fold perspective: first looking at North India, from the Indo-Gangetic plains to Bengal, then at Maharashtra and the Deccan together and then at the South, including Karnataka, TN and Kerala. This shifting allows us the reader to constantly compare the topics under discussion within India itself. it would have ben better if some comparison was also afforded with the rest of Asia and Europe under each division. The biggest takeaways are the role of cities in promoting trade and maintaining caste distinctions, the importance of the tax regimes in setting the tone for an empire's economic wake, and the insignificance of political changes as far as long established trade practices are concerned.
Most of the discussion centers on the Mughal period and on the early European phase, primarily due to the limitations of sources. The mature sultanate period is discussed cursorily and pre-1300 is barely touched upon. Pre-Vijayanagara in the south also gets no coverage. In fact, as far as the south is concerned, the book is not very useful. The North-East (Assam) comes in only as an after-thought, in a long appendix.
Despite all this, this Cambridge History is as comprehensive as it could have been with the limited space, though more could have been covered by limiting the amount of repetition that peppers this book. Beyond that most of the faults that can be found with it arise from the unfortunate limitations of source-material and scholarship in the Economic history of India. ...more
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