Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India
  • Cited by 261
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
November 2009
Print publication year:
1994
Online ISBN:
9780511583551
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583551
Subjects:
Area Studies, South Asian History, Asian Studies, History, Twentieth Century Regional History
Series:
Cambridge South Asian Studies (51)
Information

Book description

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar presents the first major study of the relationship between labour and capital in India's economic development in the early twentieth-century. He explores the emergence of capitalism in the region, the development of the cotton textile industry, its particular problems in the 1920s and 1930s and the mill owners' and the state's responses to them. The author also investigates how a labour force was formed in Bombay - its rural roots, urban networks, industrial organisation and the way in which it shaped capitalist strategies. In a subject dominated by the assumption of unities, Rajnarayan Chandavarkar convincingly demonstrates the fragmentation of class, on the side of both capital and labour. Their interaction sometimes exacerbated their internal differences. But, the author also asks on what terms, to what ends, and under what circumstances solidarities could be forged between workers.

Reviews

"It is a rich, complex, interactive, and fearsomely variable world of labor through which the author skillfully leads us....What makes this an excellent history is the degree of detail incorporated into his story which so enriches its telling....One can almost feel the heat and pulse of living human beings. Such anchoring in life makes history more than theories and analyses which appear to 'manage' the past and protect us from 'over' generalization. At the same time, the author has drawn sound conclusions from analyses based on an impressive foundation of primary source materials....a superb study of an example of industrial development during the first half of this century. Chandavarkar has written a masterful history." George E. Moore, The Historian

"Rajnarayan Chandavarkar's book furthers our understanding of the evolution of Bombay from an insignificant settlement on swampy, inhospitable islands to its current position as the financial capital of India." American Historical Review

"This is a work of great erudition." Reviews of Books

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.