A History of the Mahrattas v1.c30.122

v1.c30.122

¹ [This statement is somewhat surprising. Professor J. Sarkar has pointed out that the Marāthā Government neglected the economic development of the country. ‘Some of them did, no doubt, try to save the peasantry from illegal exactions, and to this extent they promoted agriculture. But commerce was subjected to frequent harassment by local officers, and the traders could never be certain of freedom of movement and security of their rights on mere payment of the legal rate of duty. The internal resources of a small province with no industry, little trade, a sterile soil, and an agriculture dependent upon scanty and precarious rainfall, could not possibly support the large army that Shivaji kept or the imperial position and world-dominion to which the Peshwas aspired.’ He points out that the Marāthā State had to wage war periodically as a normal method of supply, and that this circumstance destroyed both industry and wealth in the invading and invaded countries. (*Shivaji and His Times*, 1919, 486-8.) See also article by R. P. Karkaria in *J.B.B.R.A.S.*, xxii. 43 ff., on Lieutenant-Colonel T. B. Jervis (1796–1857). In his MSS. studies on the state of the Marāthā people, Jervis shows that the economic condition of the people at the time of the dissolution of Marāthā rule was very miserable.]