1 The colonial state harboured suspicions towards the professional elites and therefore coopted the landed elites 2 and attempted to ensure their preservation as regional potentates. In predominantly agrarian societies elsewhere, especially in colonies like the South Asian sub-continent, the emergence of a bourgeoisie was a slow and largely state-dependent process. Historically speaking, the feudal lords lost their politico-economic ascendancy in Europe and North America to an ambitious, highly literate, and urban-based middle class, forerunner of modern Western civilisation.
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