Custom, Landownership and Women: A Colonial Legislation in North India

Abstract

The manner in which regional agrarian structures have been shaped by a variety of colonial interventions has received widespread scholarly attention, where studies have explored the impact of legal measures on regional agrarian structures and the processes of change that were unleashed. The colonial experiment in Avadh which began with the annexation of the province in 1856, is representative of land settlements initiated to create a landed gentry which could act as the bulwark to colonial rule but which in turn gave rise to transformative social processes that affected all classes and vastly restructured society.