24 SOCIAL SCIENTIST and that there is need also to take into account a number of factors which in general discussions, at any rate, have seemed to escape notice. I hope that this paper would induce research workers, more qualified to speak-on the subject, to enter the debate and help to reconstruct an acceptable framework for studying tlic economic processes of these hundred and fifty years. I In order ro study these processes, it is imperative to keep in mind two given starting points. The first is the mode of production, especially the system of extraction of surplus (or, to use the more convenient term, exploitation) existing inThdia on the eve of the British conquests. The orher is the nature of British imperialism, which was itself subject to change as Britisli econom^wai transformed under the impact of the Industrial Revolution. On tlic first of these points, I sliall presume, in order to save time, to summarize the conclusiony that I have been led to, on. the basic arguments set out in some detail in two earlier papers.4 The primary method of surplus-extraction throughout India had come to be the levy of land revenue on behalf of or, in the name of, the Sovereign Ruler. This insiitution had come about not by "immemorial usage", as British administrators were inclined to think,5 but as the result of a historical process which can be studied ® and wliich would appear to belie the theory of unchangcablcness of prc-colonial societies. Whatever its origins, it was now a cardinal principle of the Indian agrarian-system, tliat land revenue should embrace the bulk of the surplus above the peasant's needs of subsistence. Prc-colonial Economy The way in which the claims to land revenue were assigned, that is, how this share of the surplus was distributed among members of the ruling class (by way of/^zr as in the Mughal Empire) defined the basic elements of polity. Upon the expenditure of this vast surplus by the/ ruling class was based the urban economy of pre-colonial India, with itsj large craft production, large volume of long-distance trade and a considers able development of commercial capital.7 « , ( Subordinate to the land revenue, and nominally forming a part of it, was a share in the surplus that went to a heterogeneous hereditary or Femi-hereditary class of superior-right-holders over the land, to whom the Mughal clerks gave the convenient designation, ^amindars. Their nominal share varied from one-tenth of the land revenue in northern India and Bengal to one-fourth in Gujarat. It m'ght actually have amounted to more than these shares, but the recorded sale prices of ^amindari rights suggest that the income expected from them was always very small compared to the land revenue paid on the same land.8 One should remind oneself that cash nexus (payment of land