Fishing Rights and Colonial Government: Institutional Development in the Bengal Presidency

Shourya Sen and Richard Adelstein ()
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Richard Adelstein: Department of Economics, Wesleyan University

No 2019-001, Wesleyan Economics Working Papers from Wesleyan University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We examine the evolution of fishing rights in colonial Bengal through a series of cases heard at the Calcutta High Court in the 1880s and culminating in the passage of legislation in 1889. We posit an implicit relational contract between the colonizing British and the landowning class in colonial Bengal as a way to understand the concurrent evolution of fishing rights and institutions of governance in the region. The system of incentives created by this contract determined the development of fishing rights at a crucial moment in the history of colonial Bengal and, more broadly, became a primary mechanism of institutional change in the region. The analysis also shows the Calcutta High Court to have acted, albeit in vain, as a truly independent judiciary.

Keywords: fishing rights; state formation; relational contracts; colonialism; credible commitments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N55 O13 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cta and nep-his
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wes:weswpa:2019-001

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