Indian History GK Questions with Answers – Page 52

The word mahal means an estate or a village, and in this settlement the demand was fixed for the whole mahal; the village headman, called the lambardar, collected the shares from the co-sharers, and the village as a body was jointly responsible for the full amount.

Under its rules the revenue instalment had to reach the treasury before sunset on the appointed day; if it did not, the estate was liable to be sold at public auction, and many old families lost their zamindaris to Calcutta merchants in the first two decades.

The settlement required the zamindar to pay ten-elevenths of the rental he collected from the peasants to the state and to retain one-eleventh for himself, which is why the demand pressed so heavily and so many estates changed hands in the early years.

Munro, with Captain Alexander Read, worked out the Ryotwari settlement in the Baramahal and Madras region, and extended it widely after he became Governor of Madras in 1820; the state dealt directly with the ryot, the individual cultivator, who held the land so long as he paid the assessment.

Cornwallis, Governor-General from 1786 to 1793, made the settlement permanent in 1793 on the advice of John Shore, recognising the zamindars as proprietors of the soil against a revenue demand fixed for ever.

The Great Depression that began in 1929 pulled down the prices of primary produce such as wheat, cotton and jute far more sharply, and for far longer, than the prices of the manufactured goods the peasant had to buy.

In Poverty and Un-British Rule in India Naoroji gathered his estimates of India's national income and set out the theory of the drain of wealth, showing that a part of the country's wealth was carried to Britain every year without any return, through home charges, the salaries and pensions of…

Holkar was defeated at Mahidpur in the Third Anglo-Maratha War and signed the Treaty of Mandasor in 1818, accepting British control over his foreign relations.

Baji Rao II surrendered to the British in June 1818 at the close of the Third Anglo-Maratha War and was removed from the Deccan altogether, being granted a pension and a residence at Bithur in the Ganga plain.

After the Treaty of Bassein of December 1802, Scindia and the Bhonsle of Nagpur took the field against the Company.

Hyder Ali led Mysore into that war in 1780, defeated a British force at Pollilur the same year and died of a carbuncle in December 1782 while the war was still being fought.

It was the last and decisive engagement of the First Anglo-Sikh War and was followed within weeks by the Treaty of Lahore of 9 March 1846.

The Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848 to 1849 began with the revolt of Mulraj at Multan and was decided by the battles of Chillianwala in January 1849 and Gujrat in February 1849.

After the First Anglo-Sikh War the Treaty of Lahore of 9 March 1846 imposed a war indemnity of one and a half crore rupees on the Sikh state, which it could not pay.

He fought the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817 to 1818 as one campaign against the Pindaris and the Maratha chiefs, defeating the Peshwa at Khadki, the Bhonsle at Sitabuldi and Holkar at Mahidpur.

Signed in 1782 during the governor-generalship of Warren Hastings, the Treaty of Salbai restored to each side the territory held before the war, recognised Madhavrao II as Peshwa and gave the Company and the Marathas roughly twenty years of peace, until the Treaty of Bassein upset the balance in 1802.

Defeated by Yashwantrao Holkar at Poona, the Peshwa fled to British protection and signed the Treaty of Bassein on 31 December 1802, accepting a subsidiary alliance under which a British force was stationed in his territory and his foreign relations passed to the Company.

Lord Wellesley, who wanted every major state inside his subsidiary alliance system, accused Tipu Sultan of corresponding with the French.

The Second Anglo-Mysore War, fought from 1780 to 1784, ended with the Treaty of Mangalore signed in 1784 between Tipu Sultan and the English East India Company on the basis of mutual restitution of conquered territory.

On 14 January 1761 the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau, in which the young Vishwasrao was also killed, and the defeat ended the Maratha bid to succeed the Mughals as the paramount power of northern India.