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A HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE CONTROL OF GRASS AND FODDER RESOURCES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MAHARASHTRA

Sumit Guha

INTRODUCTION

The great majority of the population of India has for long lived in the countryside, largely deriving its subsistence by cultivating crops and rearing animals as well as gathering plants and catching wild animals. Most people were quite poor and crop failures sometimes caused famines in which tens of thousands perished of hunger or disease. While historians have studied many aspects of life in that time, it is only recently that many scholars have turned to the study of environmental history. Historical research is an effort to reconstruct the past by using the evidence from that time. This is necessary because even people ...

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