In 1770, the agrarian scene in Bengal was marked by the scarcity of people and vast stretches of uncultivated fertile land. Two centuries later, land in the west and east Bengals has some of the highest densities of population. The turbulent hydrography of Bengal's great rivers has had a close bearing on the agrarian economy of Bengal. The ecology of the Bakarganj district cut across by numerous streams gave rise to an extraordinary pattern of subinfeudation under substantial farmers known as haoladars to facilitate the work of reclamation. The demographic behaviour of west and east Bengal diverged sharply from the middle of the nineteenth century to about 1920. The final phase of demographic cycles in Bengal has been characterized by declining per capita output in a context of the generation of absolute surplus labour. Price movements of land and its products, as well as flows of credit for financing cultivation, interacted with the parameters set by demography.