Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c59.s1.5

v4.c59.s1.5

An aristocracy of wealth has grown up in British India trying to fill the vacuum caused by the abolition of the aristocracy of birth. An attempt was made by the British to create, by means of the Permanent Settlement of Land (1793), a landed aristocracy, without the political status and powers of the feudal baronage, who would help in conducting the administration and maintaining rural peace like the landed gentry who did much of the administrative work of Great Britain in an honorary capacity before the Reform Act of 1832. They were expected to be enlightened “improving landlords” and justices of the peace. But the attempt totally failed.