Discuss, with examples, the significance of monetary transactions during the period under consideration.
(a) The political stability of the Mughal, Ming (China), Safavid (Iran) and Ottoman (Turkey) empires led to increased overland trade from China to the Mediterranean Sea.
(b) Discovery of new lands also gave an impetus to Asia’s trade with Europe. As a result enormous amount of silver entered India as payment for goods bought from India.
(c) This benefitted India as she did not have enough resources of silver. Therefore from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries there was sufficient reserves of silver in India and the silver rupya was available readily.
(d) This resulted in an unprecedented expansion in the minting of coins and circulation of money allowing the Mughal state to extract taxes and revenues in cash.
(e) Giovanni Careri’s account gives us an idea of the phenomenal amounts of cash and commodity transactions which took place in seventeenth century India.
Examine the evidence that suggests that land revenue was important for the Mughal fiscal system.
What are the problems in using the Ain as a source for reconstructing agrarian history? How do historians deal with this situation?
To what extent is it possible to characterise agricultural production in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries as subsistence agriculture? Give reasons for your answer.
Describe the role played by women in agricultural production.
