This chapter outlines economic organization and activity in late-eighteenth-century north India. One way to penetrate the diverse historical experience of various parts of north India in the period is to get a sense of how the economy was organized in the middle of the eighteenth century in terms of different types of trade. By distinguishing between trade in luxury goods, wholesale commodity trade, and localized exchanges around towns and cities and within complexes of related villages, one can obtain a rough picture of economic organization applicable to north India in general. The chapter also emphasizes the pivotal role of the state of transportation in the Mughal period. It shows that the expansion of the commodity trade down the Ganges river, a consequence of peace and security and the connection to the world economy via Calcutta, is the key factor for the economic history of the region. The chapter also reviews the changes in north Indian agriculture in the nineteenth century.

The Ganges river system, together with the Brahmaputra further east, shaped the human geography and economic life of eastern India. In some parts of eastern Bengal the river was the only channel of communication and bulk transport of commercial goods. A notable development in the agricultural history of eastern India during our period was the growth of commercial agriculture. Though the cultivated area under cash crops remained, till the end of the period, too small appreciably to affect the peasant economy of the region as a whole, the effects of the growth were far from negligible, and its study would also indicate the factors in the decision of peasants to change over from the traditional subsistence crops to cash-crops. The growth of commercial agriculture, even where it did not lead to the emergence of a distinct export sector, necessitated a great deal of adjustment in the old organization of the small peasant economy.