Scottish Backgrounds and Indian Experiences in the Late Eighteenth Century

Investigates the motivations behind the East India Company's "ryotwari" system (one of the three principal methods of revenue collection in British India, enforced mainly in the south of the country) which was developed by a group of Scottish taxmen during the Madras Presidency of the 1790s. Considers the interplay between the background of three Scottish tax-collectors (Read, Macleod and Munroe) and their work in the Baramahal over the initial years the system was devised (1792-1799) in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the processes of colonialism and to explore the viability of the common notion that a "Scottish school of thought" was present in EIC governance.