Northern and Central India

Abstract

The upper Gangetic region, which today falls largely within the boundaries of Uttar Pradesh, exercised a palmary influence on the evolution of the Indian landholding system in the colonial period. When the British annexed the upper Gangetic region and formed the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1801-03, they at first made considerable use of the magnate element for local revenue collection purposes. Apart from increasing the importance of cash in the agrarian economy, the other important change effected by the British revenue system in the first half of the nineteenth century was to make the incidence of the revenue demand more uniform, at least within individual districts. The last half-century of British rule in the United Provinces witnessed a sharp intensification of agrarian difficulties and an increasing reponsiveness of the land revenue administration to political pressures. By the beginning of the century the net cultivated area reached almost its maximum extent of some 35 to 36 million acres.