52 SOCIAL SCIENTIST THE CAUSES OF AGRICULTURAL BACKWARDNESS OF MALABAR Agricultural Performance under Colonial Rule The British Malabar comprised of a vast region covering an area of about 6262 square miles. It was divided into 18 taluks and 2222 villages for administrative purposes by the beginning of 19th century.2 Malabar was richly endowed with natural resources such as soil, climate, rainfall, etc., favourable to the growth of a wide variety of plants and trees. A large portion of Malabar to the east is mountainous and overrun with forests.3 Some of the evergreen forests of Kerala, such as 'Silent Valley* and 'Attapady Valley', are located within the district. The climate of Malabar is also favourable to the cultivation of grain as well as plantation crops. The rainfall varies from 50 to 300 inches. The district also has a number of rivers and backwaters. At the beginning of the nineteenth century agriculture was the chief economic activity of the people and provided the means of livelihood to the entire population except a few who engaged in trade, commerce, cotton weaving, carpentry, smithy, fishing etc. On the basis of the available information, we estimate that the population engaged in non-agricultural activities hardly exceeded five percent of the total population in 1837.4 The agrarian system was characterised by a hierarchy of land rights in which agrestic slaves stood at the bottom. Except for the transactions that took place in trading centres with coins, Malabar remained a non-monetised economy. The region produced a variety of agricultural products like paddy, coconut, betel nut, ginger, pepper, cardamom, and horticultural produce like jack fruits, plantains, mangoes etc. Among these products, the important items exported were pepper, coconut, coconut products, betel nut, cardamom and timber during the first decade of the nineteenth century.5 Pepper was the single largest export earner among the products exported and accounted for about 45 percent of the total value of exports from Malabar in 1804.6 Pepper was known as the 'black gold' of Malabar and the power struggles waged by the Portuguese, Dutch and English in this region were primarily with the objective of monopolising the pepper trade. Originally pepper was cultivated only in the two taluks of Malabar viz., Chirakkal and Kottayam. The composition of exports changed during the first three decades of the nineteenth century and by the end of the 1830s pepper ceased to be the largest export earner of Malabar. Coconut and coconut products like copra, coconut oil, coir and coir products were the second important set of items exported from Malabar. By the 1840s coconut and its products emerged as the largest export earner for Malabar. Coconut cultivation was largely concentrated in the coastal regions. Coconut cultivation had not spread to a significant extent in the inland regions, because of lack of adequate irrigation and the consequent lower yield from the trees.