process is another matter. Despite an initial surge in moneylender investments in land, interventions and endogenous changes weakened the tendency. It was also regionally variable as the location and intensity of debt- related peasant revolts suggest, Limits to this tendency were set by the rich peasants beginning to finance (Bhattacharya, Bose), even starting up as full-fledged bankers (Baker), or by the mahajan's outsider/ specialist status in eastern Bengal such that unsecured loans tended to be more popular than land mortgage (Bose). Further, Stokes suggests a strong cyclical rhythm in moneylender investments based upon the rather obvious, but somehow neglected, point that by transfer of ownership the creditor assumed the riskiness of cultivation.
