Question

explain the major features of Indian countryside in late 18th and 19th centuries

Answer 1

Major features of Indian countryside in the 18th and 19th centuries were:

1.Introduction of regular land revenue system: The British saw land revenue as a major source of government income. So to build the resources of the state, efforts were made to impose a regular system of land revenue increase revenue rates and expand the area under cultivation.
2. Increase in area under cultivation : As cultivation and its impact: as cultivation expanded, the area under forests and pastures declined. All this created many problems for peasants and pastoralists. They found their access to forests and grazing lands increasingly restricted by rules and regulations. 
3. Variety of crops: In the colonial period, rural India also came to produce a range of crops for the world market. In the early eighteenth century, indigo and opium were two of the major commercial crops. By the end of the century, peasants were introducing sugarcane, cotton, jute, wheat and several other crops for export to feed the population of urban Europe and to supply the mills of Lancashire and Manchester in England.