Population growth and agrarian change in British Gujarat, Kaira District, 1802-1858

Ester Boserup\u27s hypotheses regarding the inter-relationships between population growth, land use and techniques of production in an agrarian society were the primary stimuli for this study of the peasant cultivators of Kaira district (Gujarat, India) during the half century of de jure sovereignty by the English East India Company. Using a neo-classical utility-maximizing model of peasant behavior, and data culled from early nineteenth century Revenue department, Topographical and Survey, and village records in English and Gujarati, the adaptive responses of Kaira\u27s cultivators to changes in their demographic, economic and institutional environment are explored. Particular attention is paid to the impact of changes in the level and structure of the land revenue demands of the state, increasing population densities, and fluctuations in relative prices on decision-making. Sharing a common behavioral pattern with peasants in other times and other places, Kaira\u27s cultivators responded to diminished net per capita output both extensively and intensively, and in doing so substantively altered the landscape of their farms, villages and region. Whether responding to increased population densities, fluctuations in relative prices or modifications in the Company\u27s revenue demands, they adapted by adopting well-known, successful technologies. They brought new lands under annual cultivation by clearing jungla and sowing grassland with millets and grains. They improved the productivity of land by leveling, bunding and irrigating it, and maintained its fertility through the application of natural fertilizers, crop rotations and cultivation of fertility-enhancing crops. They used land more intensively by reducing the proportion of cultivable land left under annual fallow and by increasing the proportion sown with crops grown over two or more seasons. They chose to expand the cultivation of some crops, notably kodra and pulses, cotton, sugarcane, tobacco and garden crops, while reducing the cultivation of others, principally bajri, indigo, wheat and barley. Balancing risks and preserving adequate supplies of food for their families tempered their responses to fluctuating relative prices and revenue demands