David Ricardo
Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Colonialism and the Countryside"
Meaning
David Ricardo (1772–1823) was an English economist whose ideas were celebrated in England in the 1820s. His theory of rent said a landowner deserved only the "average rent", meaning the normal rent of the time. Anything earned above that was a surplus, and the state should tax it. Company officials trained in his ideas used this theory to shape the ryotwari settlement, a land revenue system in which the state dealt directly with each peasant (ryot), in the Bombay Deccan.
Example
From 1818, officials in the Bombay Deccan worked out the average income from each type of soil. They then fixed the state's share of it. This was Ricardo's idea put into practice in the Indian countryside.
Don't confuse with
- Cornwallis: he brought in the Permanent Settlement in Bengal (1793), which fixed the revenue forever. Ricardian thinking did the opposite. It wanted the state to keep claiming a share of any rising surplus.
Related concepts
- Ricardian theory of rent
- Rentier
- Bombay Deccan
- Thomas Munro
- Ryotwari system
- Temporary settlement
- Mahalwari system
- Malguzar
- Deccan famine of 1832-34
- Peasant indebtedness