Thorstein Veblen
Review author to: 'The Land-Systems of British India'. By B. H. BADEN-POWELL. 
Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1892. 8vo. 3 vols. Pp. xix + 699, 771, 632.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 2, No. 1. (Dec., 1893), pp. 112-115.
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[112] Mr. Baden-Powell's work is a manual of Indian land systems, for the use, 
primarily, of Indian revenue officers. But while admirably adapted, as near as 
may be judged at this distance, for this its immediate purpose, it also contains 
a great deal of material of first-rate importance to the student of tenures and 
other agrarian questions.
Something more than one-half (386 pages) of the first volume is occupied with a 
general discussion of Indian land tenures and revenue systems, by way of gaining 
a historical and theoretical standpoint for the detailed discussion of the 
particular systems in effect in the various provinces of the Indian Empire. This 
general portion (book i) is followed in the same volume by book ii., dealing in 
detail with Bengal. Book iii., occupying the whole of the second volume, 
discusses the system of village settlements, in its many local varieties. Volume 
iii. (book iv.) treats of the Raiyatári and allied systems.
The work is a monument to the intricacy and extent of the British-Indian land 
revenue system, as well as to the author's industry and erudition. One may open 
the book at almost any of its more than two thousand pages and find that the 
special subject dealt with at any given point has received scant treatment, 
rather than the contrary. At least it will seem so to anyone reading with a view 
to inform himself on the details relating to any question in which he may be 
specially interested. The space required for the treatment of the subject, and 
the multiplicity of definitions and distinctions, and varieties of detail, [113] 
serve to enforce the greatness and the wide range of British India, 
geographically, historically, culturally and ethnologically. Within almost any 
geographical subdivision treated of, we have to do with tenures ranging in 
complexity and degree of development from the simplest to cite most elaborate 
and intricate known. Where successive waves of conquest have superposed one 
system of tenures upon another, leaving in most cases a residuum of customary 
rights to represent the displaced proprietary claims of the supplanted owner or 
occupier, and to be gradually modified and differentiated by the passage of 
time, the resulting structure is a sufficiently formidable one. Where, on the 
other hand, as in the case of the Tódas, in the Nilgiri District, conquest and 
invasion by alien peoples have not disturbed the ancient order, at least within 
historic times, the system, and the prevalent concepts with respect to land 
tenure, which the English found in vogue on acquiring the over-lordship of the 
country, were of such a simple and primitive character as to baffle the 
officials by affording no features comparable to the concepts familiar to 
European habits of thought. This latter proposition holds even now, after all 
that has been achieved by the researches of the past hundred years into land 
tenures and the development of the concept of property. Witness Mr. Baden-
Powell's discussion of the "Supposed Rights of the Tódas" (vol. iii. pp. 187-8).
It is interesting to find a writer of such wide and intimate acquaintance with 
the subject from the practical side, holding a detailed, and, to a great extent, 
independent view of the origin (or origins) and life history of the Indian 
village, "under its varied conditions". He finds that "there can hardly be any 
doubt that the formation of village groups .... is not peculiar to Hindu races, 
either original or converted. It is found in India, among the great races which 
were certainly antecedent to the Hindus, and which still survive (with their 
institutions) in widely distant parts of the country. The village - apart from 
questions of particular forms - is not so much the result of any system as it is 
of a natural instinct. We find it everywhere, especially in the plain country, 
where circumstances invited it." (vol. i p. 106.) "And then, there is not one 
type of village community, but two very distinct types, one of which, again, has 
marked and curious forms and varieties. And without anticipating details, which 
must come later, I may say at ones that these two types are distinct in origin." 
(p. 106.) The group belonging to one of these two types [114] claim and 
acknowledge no joint ownership of the whole estate, or joint liability for 
burdens imposed by the state. "In the other type .... a strong joint-body .... 
has pretensions to be of higher caste or superior title to the 'tenants' who 
live on the estate. As a matter of fact, the first type of village is the one 
most closely connected with Hindu government and Hindu ideas." (p. 107.) Mr. 
Baden-Powell holds (p. 112) that "If we look to the earliest villages formed 
under the Aryans, or before that, we have no evidence (other than that of the 
[periodical] re-distribution, which I do not regard as conclusive) of a tribal 
stage; and even among the later Panjab tribes, where tribal occupation and 
allotment are clearly discernible, any previous stage of the joint holding by 
the tribe collectively, hardly seems deducible from the known facts." "Family" 
property, however, he finds to prevail as regards most villages.
"We must conclude that the first (and, as far as we know, the oldest) form of 
village is where the cultivators - practically owners of their several family 
holdings - live under a common headman, with certain common officers and 
artisans who serve them ....; and there is no landlord (class or individual) 
over the whole." (p. 129.) This is the "Raiyatwári" or "Non-landlord Village," 
and this type, the author inclines to think, is of Dravidian rather than Aryan 
origin. The second type of village is held to have arisen (a) out of this first 
type, by superposition of a landlord in one of several different ways 
enumerated, or (b) "from the original conquest and occupation of land - as far 
as we know - previously occupied." Under (a), the active factor in producing a 
joint ownership, vested in a class "of higher caste and superior title", has 
been the institution of family property and family inheritance." "When the 
original acquirer of such (landlord) rights dies, and a body of joint heirs 
succeeds, we soon find a number of co-sharers, all equally entitled, claiming 
the whole estate, and (whether remaining joint or partitioning the fields) 
forming what is called a 'joint village community'."
The author leaves but scant and dubious room for the "primitive Aryan village 
community", in the sense of a patriarchal-communistic tribal group.
A large portion, perhaps the greater portion of the part given up to the general 
discussion, deals with the history and description of legislation and 
administrative practice. The later portions are perhaps even to a greater extent 
occupied with matters of this somewhat [115] technical nature. While serving 
their immediate purpose of usefulness to the revenue official, they serve a no 
less useful purpose for the student of economic institutions (the author is as 
much a student as an official). It comes out clearly in the course of the 
narrative and exposition of what has been done and aimed at, that the officials 
who have had to do with the vast complex of the land system, have had repeatedly 
to learn from their own failures, and from the failure in one place of methods 
that had approved themselves by experience in another, how concrete and 
individual the situation in each particular locality is. Each little district, 
one might almost say each village, is in some sense a case by itself, with what 
might be called personal idiosyncracies of its own. And still, it appears at the 
same time that certain broad generalizations may be made, and may be made good 
use of. It is also evident that, while the officials, especially since the evil 
effect of the Cornwallis settlement became manifest, have striven to understand 
and to adapt themselves to the circumstances as they have found them, their own 
European habits of mind have to a large extent decided the point of view from 
which they have studied the situation. And this fact, that the administrative, 
as well as the legislative functionaries of the British-India system, have been 
men inheriting a common tradition and a common point of view, has left its 
visible effects in the trend toward unity and homogeneity in the development of 
the system. While Mr. Baden-Powell's exposition brings out in strong colors the 
variety and contrast of local systems and usages, it also brings out the fact 
(slight though the actual achievements in that direction may be) that the 
British occupation and administration of India is at work to make "India" 
something more than "a geographical expression," in spite of Mr. Baden-Powell's 
declaration (vol. i. p. 5), that the term is at present nothing more. His own 
book - the possibility of such a work of generalization and orderly statement - 
is testimony to the fact that "India" is a term connoting more of homogeneity 
and solidarity to-day than the same "geographical expression" would have covered 
in the days when scores of petty sovereign governments were each pulling its own 
way, and each developing particolored systems of its own.
The three volumes are a credit to the printer as well as to the author, and are 
copiously supplied with excellent maps and contain two good indexes.
T. B. VEBLEN.