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C OLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE 229 revenue demand. If the revenue demand of the state was permanently fixed, then the Company could look forward to a regular flow of revenue, while entrepreneurs could feel sure of earning a profit from their investment, since the state would not siphon it off by increasing its claim. The process, officials hoped, would lead to the emergence of a class of yeomen farmers and rich landowners who would have the capital and enterprise to improve agriculture. Nurtured by the British, this class would also be loyal to the Company. The problem, however, lay in identifying individuals who could both improve agriculture and contract to pay the fixed revenue to the state. After a prolonged debate amongst Company officials, the Permanent Settlement was made with the rajas and taluqdars of Bengal. They were now classified as zamindars, and they had to pay the revenue Fig. 9.3 demand that was fixed in perpetuity. In terms of Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805), painted by Thomas Gainsborough, this definition, the zamindar was not a landowner 1785 in the village, but a revenue Collector of the state. He was the commander of the Zamindars had several (sometimes as many as 400) British forces during the American villages under them. In Company calculations the War of Independence and the Governor General of Bengal when villages within one zamindari formed one revenue the Permanent Settlement was estate. The Company fixed the total demand over the introduced there in 1793. entire estate whose revenue the zamindar contracted to pay. The zamindar collected rent from the different villages, paid the revenue to the Company, and retained the difference as his income. He was expected to pay the Company regularly, failing which his estate could be auctioned. 1.3 Why zamindars defaulted on payments Taluqdar literally means “one Company officials felt that a fixed revenue demand who holds a taluq” or a would give zamindars a sense of security and, connection. Taluq came to refer to a territorial unit. assured of returns on their investment, encourage them to improve their estates. In the early decades after the Permanent Settlement, however, zamindars regularly failed to pay the revenue demand and unpaid balances accumulated. The reasons for this failure were various. First: the initial demands were very high. This was because it was felt that if the demand was fixed for all time to come, the Company would never be able to claim a share of increased income from land when prices rose and cultivation expanded. To minimise this anticipated loss, the Company pegged the revenue Reprint 2026-27