Bazaar India

In a richly textured work, Anand Yang offers a social, cultural, and economic history of markets in India’s north eastern state of Bihar during the colonial period of 1765 to 1947. Using the bazaar as his site of investigation, Yang poses fundamental questions about an indigenous society under colonialism and sheds light on a neglected facet of Indian culture. Bazaar India reconstructs the dynamics of Bihar’s marketing system, from the markets and trade systems of agrarian villages and small towns to the large and centrally located markets of urban areas. Spanning nearly two centuries, the study’s longitudinal perspective documents how markets changed across the colonial epoch. Yang draws from previously unexplored indigenous sources and colonial documents to bring the reader images of markets from various social perspectives. His original and provocative study links economic and cultural history, proving that markets connected local communities to larger networks of commerce, culture, and political power.