Locating historical evidence from south India within patterns of long-term, large-scale historical change in societies based on wet-rice cultivation and on the interaction between nomads and sedentary peoples in Asia, this book charts a distinct pattern of socio-historical change to challenge Eurocentric notions of social evolution; argues that production conditions in wet-rice agriculture did not favour large farms and that the absence of a political relationship between capitalists and rulers led to the absence of monopolies which alone generate the volumes of surplus to facilitate the emergence of capitalism; instead it argues that the density of commercial linkages led to commercialism without capitalism; the large densities of population that could be supported by rice cultivation promoted an ‘industrious revolution’ in which skill and manual dexterity had a decisive advantage over machines; in the absence of capital accumulation, terms such as ‘cores’ and ‘peripheries’ are inappropriate to describe conditions of brief situational advantage.