Commercialisation of Agriculture and its Impact in Salem District, C.1850-1950

Abstract

The commercialization of India agriculture was initiated by the British through their direct and indirect policies and political activities in India. It has an important feature of the emergence and consolidation of capitalism. The commercialization of agricultural products leads new trends in Indian economy as well as the international market with other countries. David Ludden has pointed out that the nineteen-century industrialization made much of the world Europe’s agricultural hinterland. Industry escalated European demand for peasant crops, among which cotton assumed overwhelming importance as a raw material for English cloth manufacture. At the same time, industrial technologies enabled Europeans to expand and tighten their political power in strategic corners of the world economy, thus to secure markets and improve their terms of trade. Peasants and merchants of South India participated enthusiastically in the worldwide expansion in agricultural commodity production that accompanied European industrialization.