State and Wealth: The Early States in Northeast India

by J.B. Bhattacharjee

The Early States in Northeast India, which emerges out of the H K Barpujari Endowment Lectures delivered at the Disregard University on 10th and 11th December 2007, reflects on a crucial aspect of the state formation studies, namely, the role of economy (or say, 'property', as identified by Friedrich Engels) in the origin, growth and decline of the 'early states' in Northeast India, taking the definition of 'early state' from the work of Henri J M Claessen and Peter Skalnik. The term 'wealth' has been consciously chosen in a wider sense of 'property' to include the environmental and natural wealth and the human resources that the rulers of the pre-industrial pre-capitalistic states had at their command to the extent that any 'wealth' within the state was no better than a 'private property' of the ruler. The resources, including the people in the form of subjects, constituted the 'material wealth' of the state as represented by the king, The divine origin or high birth of the ruler, which made him different from the rest of the people, was an important wealth, while his benevolence, popularity, allegiance of the nobles and loyalty of the subjects also constituted parts of the same 'social wealth'. It was by virtue of the control over the wealth - material or social - that the rulers established their authority over the people. The lecture series that is in the nature of a preliminary discourse ends up by making a plea for exploring more empirical evidence for further research in the subject in the specific context of Northeast India.

173 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2010