Crafts and Statecraft in Eighteenth Century Jodhpur

Abstract

This essay argues that too much of scholarship on state formation in late pre-colonial India has displayed an elitist bias and focused exclusively on the activities and concerns of upper-caste ruling groups alone. Building upon recent trends that have brought into view the roles of a greater diversity of groups, this article explores the agentive role of the crafts and artisan communities in the state formation of Jodhpur during the eighteenth century. This was a period when the Rathor rulers of Jodhpur were unable to rely on the external support of the Mughal Empire and felt compelled to forge alliances with new groups who, perhaps, were previously marginal to political processes in the region. This, of course, did not dissolve the difficult and often exploitative conditions under which artisans worked, and though their agency was more reactive than creative, it did serve to define and limit the levels of state appropriations in revenues and labour.