The Cornwallis system and the colonial executive -- The Gujars of the Upper Doab -- A change of system in Merath -- Beyond rules and regulations : Dehra Dun under Frederick Shore -- How the Landhaura riyāsat was dissected -- Lawlessness and legal plunder in Saharanpur
Summary
Scholarship on the pre-Bentinck period of Indian history has taken little notice of the ineviatable dilemmas of colonial rule as they became visible in the districts. This book argues that the disdain the eighteenth-century Westminster parliaments expressed both for Indians and the East India Company induced the Bengal civil service to formulate for itself a corporate identity that, because of its distant and self-centered character, prevented it to acquire an executive hold on most levels of the Indian administration. The core of the book consits of superbly-delailed studies of the ways in which, in the Ganges-Jumna doab, villagers, revenue farmers, Indian policemen and revenue officials, bankers and judges struggled to overcome or profit from this feature of the colonial administration --Book Jacket
