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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Critically evaluate various approaches to study medieval Indian towns.

  • UPSC 2010
  • Economy and Society in the 16th and 17th Centuries

The historiography of medieval Indian urbanisation has moved through several competing frameworks, each privileging a different criterion — administrative function, commercial activity, civic-legal character, or continuity with the village — for deciding what actually made a settlement a "town."

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What the full answer covers

  • The Administrative-Political Approach
  • The Economic-Commercial Approach
  • The Weberian Civic-Character Critique and Its Revision
  • The Rural-Urban Continuum Approach
  • A Composite Functional Typology

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