BOOK REVIEW 93 and the political authority of the Nawab's regime was an interplay of competition, patronage and extortion, what was significant about the political power was that it played the role of a vigilant and interested political authority, providing them with basic security. Plassey brought about a dramatic change in the situation by ensuring the direct participation of state power in monopolising trade and appropriating control over manufacture and sale. Under the umbrella of the Company whose logic precipitated full-blown capitalism, private trade acquired unlimited proportions, serving as a catalyst to structural reorientation of the pattern of commodity and the financial flows in the second half of the eighteenth century. To secure its economic ends the Company not only dominated the market as the biggest single buyer and imposed restrictions on the freedom of the producers, but also devised machinery for the procurement of export goods in such a way as to subjugate or exclude Indian trading capital from spheres chosen by the Company. The Company was acting not simply as a trading power. It is true that after Plassey the Company's tribute in the form of investment and its increased role stimulated demand for certain products such as opium, indigo, silk and salt. It is also rightly asserted that the establishment of the Company's rule did not directly affect internal trade at this stage and that it brought major changes in direction and composition of overseas trade, the objective of this being N) re-export Asian commodities throughout the world rather than supply the British industries with raw material. But it needs also be emphasised that in the wake of the establishment of the new order the structure of internal trade got severely strained, illustrated, for instance, by the history of the cash crops. The shift from food crops to cash crops, in some cases at least, was a forced process as money was needed to meet the growing burden of revenue and rents in cash. On the basis of the political leverage available to^them, the English were in a position to coerce the producers and suppliers into a position of relative disadvantage. The active protection given by the Company to the Agency Houses made private monopoly the rule, infringing on the freedom of producers to cultivate. The horrors of growing crops like indigo and the institutional set-up linked to it has been underrated by Marshall. Some crucial dimensions of the indigo rebellion thus remain unexplained. In agrarian structure, once again, Marshall emphasises the theme of continuity. As under the Nawab's regime, the primary aim was the maximisation of revenue which the Company believed would only be done through an unequivocal recognition of the property rights of the zamindars. Hence the Permanent Settlement of 1793. Such a demand by zamindars for recognition of property rights, he points out, was present even in the Nawab's regime and the Company did not enforce assessments with any more rigour than their predecessors had done.