The editor has selected, out of a huge body of published and unpublished material, the key essays which show up the major themes that have dominated the historiography on India's rural labor. A variety of perspectives - the economic, the cultural, the demographic, the taxonomic, the political, the colonial, the nationalistic--are either presented or extensively commented on. In keeping with the format of this series, a detailed introduction discusses how and why the study of agricultural laborers came into existence, as well as shifts in perspective and changes in the questions asked. The volume shows how historical information on labor was gathered by British administrators and census operations, the uses to which this was put by nationalist writers, the revisions and additions to this by contemporary economic historians, and the various new perspectives from which we can now view peasants and their world.