 These moneylenders and traders emerged as the new landlords, while the curse of

indebtness plagued the Indian peasantry. So, revenue policies of the British East India
Company destroyed the traditional economic fabric of the Indian society. E.g. Permanent
Settlement (1793); Ryotwari Settlement (1820). . The precedent for this system of
conquer-and-tax had been set by the infamous duo of Clive and Hastings in the late
eighteenth century, and had persisted into the early nineteenth century under the name
'Home Charges'-essentially the drain of wealth from India to Britain in the form of
bullion and bills to cover trade deficits to India and China1. Marxist historian (Eric
Stokes, in The Peasant Armed, the Indian Revolt of 1857) saw the uprising as a popular
peasant revolt, almost inevitable in fact as the British had destroyed the ‘social
organism’ of Indian Society by the introduction of steam engine and free trade2.

1
C.A. Bayley Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge 1988) p. 116
2
Stokes, Eric. The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857. Oxford, 1986