W SOCTAL SCIENTIST docs not sec that it was the iniquity of the colonial capitalist system that had brought the two groups together. Of course, the imperial rulera could not work out a solution to satisfy both without legislating them* selves out of existence. However, the prices of industrial goods did nspt fall as much as those of agriciiltural commodities. So CheUiar fnaney^ lenders and Gouader traders moved into the biggest industry of the south—cotton textiles. The frceanng of loans granted by Ohc^iar money-lenders to Burman, Malayan and Indo-Chinese landlords and peasants also forced many of them to seek new avenues of investment. The drying up of outlets for South Indian raw cotton with the escalation of Japan^s aggression in China further hastened the move ix^lo industry. (The development of hydroelectric power also helped this processs.) Baker's concentration on the fortunes of the collaborators of the 1920s obscures his view of many of the new development^ even at the level of upper class agitation; movements at the level of workers, peasants and tribesmen are hardly torched on at all. Writiag the social, economic and political hi&tory of India under the British is necessarily an arduous t^sk. Washbrook and Baker have bpth turped up a large number of facts in their digging, and others can. fit them into the new models which they conduct. The work of both is, However, open to the charge of superficiality becAu&e of tbeif unwillingness to tunnel deep under the imperial edifice. The work of both, but more particularly of Baker, has suffered al&o from an immature susceptibility to the belief that since the general run of Indian politicians put under the Washbarook-Baker microscope are no wiser than the general run of Cambridge dons, their political activities must lack any of the rationale they put forward. A tendency to superciliousness has renderd the authors—p^ctwul" arly. Baker—blind to the limitations of their own methods. But it ha& al&o ensured that their books will be branded—unjustly—as period pieces in th« style of..., circa 1960-1975, Cambridge, England. More is the pity, because with a self-critical approach to their methods, both could have produced enduring pieces of research. AHIYA KUMAR BAG^HI 1 DA Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency 1870 1920. s Ibid, pp 76<77. » Ibid, p 83. 4 Qustopherjohn Baker, The Politics of South India 1920-1937, p 279.