The Study consists of three Parts. In the first the character of earlier administrations and the filling in of the area's social frontier before 1861 are described using the concept of four subregions within the administrative region. The British administrator's social setting of re-creating English enclaves is also analyzed as part of the background. The second Pa~t stresses the limitations of British colonial rule because of its concentration on consolidative institutions, minimal expenditure on developmental and social service institutions, and its lack of control over economic forces and events. Especially reviewed are the way in which the introduction of Western education influenced different segments of the population, the types of local self-government institutions established and political developments, the efforts to provide health-care and demographic trends, and finally British land policies ar,d Indian adjustments to them.

The last Part analyzes three case studies which reveal the differential effects of colonial rule. The first case study looks at the Marwari business family of Raja Gokuldas who benefited from their collaboration with the British during the Mutiny and afterwards. Gokuldas eventually built a commercial empire which

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extended far beyond the confines of the province and included many banks, shops, markets, land holdings, and several modern factories.Second, the Baiga tribe were threatened by the new rules and procedures of the British administration which confiscated much of their land for forest conservation and pursued a policy of transforming the Baigas from forest to regular field cultivators. The third case study is of the low-caste Chamars of Chhattisgarh. They attempted to improve their social status and their economic position. As they were a large proportion of the farmers in the area, they benefited from some of the new economic opportunities provided by the construction of the railway in the late nineteenth century. This also produced increased opposition by landlords toward some Chamars in their villages and further problems at times of economic crisis such as the famines of the late 1890s. They, like the Baigas, adopted several method in order to survive these changing and difficult conditions.

The examination of the colonial administration generally and of these three case studies specifically indicates the different ways through which Indian society and the British administration interacted with each other over six decades.

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In the 1960s and 1970s several historians have criticized the historiography which was current during the colonial period and in part still endures. Bernard Cohn, Anil Seal and Tom Kessinger among others have generally suggested the earlier studies concentrated on the vicissitudes of British policy formation at the top levels of

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administration. ¹ This approach tended to ignore the uneven, piecemeal implementation of British policy at the regional and local levels and often failed to recognize changes and continuities within Indian society.

In accepting some of these and other suggestions, this study has adopted two approaches for reassessing the colonial period. One is to indicate the interconnection, or lack of it, between British policy and implementation while recognizing the initiative of Indians to develop alternative institutions and participate in activities which often paralleled the administrative structure. A second approach examines Indian communities in their own local setting to assess social, economic, and political continuities and changes.

Besides the need to reassess the colonial period by new approaches,one of the clear and basic motives for selecting the Central Provinces is that it has not attracted considerable attention and examination.D. Baker's thesis on the Central Provinces from 1919 to 1939 and Peter Harnetty's articles on its economic aspects from 1861 to 1921 remain almost the only recent research efforts. Two reasons for its past obscurity or unpopularity appear to he its inferior position during British rule in India and its extreme diversity. On the one hand the

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British gave it comparatively little attention, and on the other hand its heterogeneity presented, and still continues to present problems for easy characterization and analysis.

Sources were collected during one year of research in London and three months tour of the area of the old Central Provinces in India.The sources consist primarily of the monthly proceedings of the Provincial administration, district settlement reports and gazetteers,biographical materials, and discussions with descendants of prominent families of the Central Provinces.

The topics of the dissertation are divided into three Parts.The first describes the British images of the Central Provinces and the life style of the British community. The second stresses the limitations of British colonial rules because of its concentration on consolidative institutions, minimal expenditure on developmental and social service institutions, and the lack of control over economic activities and events. The last Part analyses three case studies which reveal the differential affect of British colonial rule.The first case study looks at the Marwari business family of Raja Gokuldas who benefited from their collaboration with the British during the Mutiny and afterwards. The second examines the tribal Baigas of upland Balaghat district and how British rule threatened their survival. The third case study is of the low-caste Chamars of Chhattisgarh. As a large proportion of the farmers in the area they benefited from new economic opportunities, but also were opposed by upper-caste and upper class Hindu landlords. Each of these case studies indicates different ways through which Indian communities changed during the initial six decades of colonial rule in the Central Provinces.

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1. See Bernard Cohn's review of historigraphical trends in 1970, "Society and Social Change under the Raj," South Asian Review 4 (October 1970): 27-49. Anil Seal and Tom Kessinger have reassessed changes during the colonial period from two extremes from an all India perspective and from a village. Anil Seal, "Imperialism and Nationalism in India," Locality, Province and Nation, ed. by John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (Cambridge: University Press, 1973), pp. 1-27; and Tom Kessinger, Vilayatpur: 1848-1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). [BACK]