In What Way, and to What Degree, Did the Mughal State Inhibit Smithian Growth In India in the Seventeenth Century?

The nature of the seventeenth-century Mughal state and its land revenue taxation system has become a matter of controversy in recent years. Irfan Habib and his followers dominated thinking on this subject from the sixties onwards. They saw the regime as highly centralized and essentially extractive in nature. The land revenue system was designed to extract the whole surplus, leaving the peasants immiserated. Trade was sterile in that it was state inspired, and required to meet the cash demands of the tax system. ‘Natural’ commerce and Smithian growth scarcely existed, since there was no surplus after the state had taken its share.[...]