The Metamorphoses of Agrarian Capitalism

Book reviewed in this article:Daniel Thorner (ed.), Ecological and Agrarian Regions of South Asia circa 1930Daniel Thorner’s agrarian atlas of India, fully prepared for the press by 1965, was belatedly published two decades later thanks to the untiring efforts of Alice Thorner. The heart of the atlas consists of a series of descriptions written by the historian Chen Han‐seng to illustrate his division of the subcontinent into 21 agrarian regions. The review begins by describing Chen’s regionalization and conveying some sense of the quality of his descriptions of individual regions. It then raises analytical issues related to Chen’s understanding of agrarian capitalism and his reluctance to characterize developments in the late colonial countryside in terms of the growth of capitalism. The conclusion contrasts two conceptions of agrarian capitalism, rejecting the idea of a historical prototype.