The Coromandel Coast and its Hinterland: Economy, Society and Political System (A.D. 1500-1600).

• Author: Ludden, David
• Position: Book Review

By S. JEYASEELA STEPHEN. Delhi: MANOHAR PUBLISHERS, 1997. Pp. 269. Rs 500.

This path-breaking compilation of data on India's southeastern coast (now in northern Tamil Nadu) during the heyday of Vijayanagar Nayakas and Portuguese settlers is based predominantly on English renderings of Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit inscriptions in Annual Reports of Indian Epigraphy and on Portuguese archival sources. Though it responds to work by many historians, its analysis and argumentation are less useful than its information and citations. Its combination of sources is particularly important. I do not think any other work on pre-modern history combines Indian and European evidence so thoroughly. The geographical region and subject matter are designed to optimize the utility of this particular mix of documentation.

The first chapter describes territories named in epigraphic sources and provides the best map detail we have for this period. It also documents the role and position of Nayakas both in their own localities and in their imperial relations with Vijayanagar Rayas. Having argued that Nayaka military colonization under Vijayanagar involved revenue payments to Rayas to sustain Nayaka authority, the chapter concludes rather flatly (and unconvincingly, in the face of evidence that the local power of the Nayakas was substantially their own) that "revenue farming was the single most important fact of the political economy of the Coromandel in the sixteenth century" (p. 39). Having thus assumed the central power of Rayas to organize revenue farming, the second chapter effectively documents the independent productive force of Nayakas in the expansion of agriculture, projecting arguments that others have made for later periods back into a period that has not to date received as much attention.

Many gems lie in later chapters on manufacturing and on urban-rural linkages in trade networks inland and overseas. Though the weight of sources shifts to the Portuguese, the centrality of temple centers stands out nonetheless. It seems odd their economic importance does not appear in the earlier discussion of agriculture. There is virtually no discussion of irrigation tank, dam, or canal building, and no effort to weave together agrarian, commercial, and manufacturing--all equally centered on temples, forts, and market towns. The extensive descriptive account of long-distance trade, based on Portuguese sources, concentrates on sea trade along the coast and across the...