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Darjeeling
History has always dealt with people, yet often gazing at the people from the perspectives of the non-people – colonizers, intruders, outsiders and the privileged elite insiders – who seem to have internalized the ‘mainstream’ perspective framed by the outsiders. In this context a group of scholars working on Darjeeling felt that there was a need for an inclusive people’s history of the Darjeeling hills. The present volume tries to fill this gap of the missing voices of the people of the Darjeeling hills and their cultures through re-writing inclusive history of society and culture from ‘below’, not only by decoding the elements that are treated as tradition, but also the trans...
Tropical Nature
Across Africa and South-East Asia, the impulse to protect nature often dovetails with the domination of local people. From mass displacement to severe restrictions on land use and daily acts of violence, conservation work risks reproducing Eurocentric modes of colonialism and worsening the effects of the climate crisis. In this insightful and wide-ranging study of the colonial history of conservation, Tropical Nature seeks to provide a much-needed history of the Global South from its own perspective. Comparing case studies ranging from Ali Bongo’s Gabon, to the postcolonial African itinerary of the agronomist Arthur Bunting, this volume advances a “small-scale global history” that deciphers the relations binding human societies to the non-human world.
Agrarian Development in Colonial India
This book looks at agriculture, development, poverty and British rule in India, especially in the Patna Division in Bihar between c.1870–1920. It traces the economic influence of British policies and maps the impact of legal, administrative and scientific interventions to rural conditions and norms in the state. The book discusses British theories and policies of ‘improvement’, comparing them with Bihar’s agricultural practice and socio-economic conditions to draw conclusions about rural impoverishment. Following on from his earlier book, Ancient Rights and Future Comfort on the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885, the author also presents case studies on famines, debts, canal and village irr...
Shooting a Tiger
The figure of the white hunter sahib proudly standing over the carcass of a tiger with a gun in hand is one of the most powerful and enduring images of the empire. This book examines the colonial politics that allowed British imperialists to indulge in such grand posturing as the rulers and protectors of indigenous populations. This work studies the history of hunting and conservation in colonial India during the high imperial decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At this time, not only did hunting serve as a metaphor for colonial rule signifying the virile sportsmanship of the British hunter, but it also enabled vital everyday governance through the embodiment of the figure of the officer–hunter–administrator. Using archival material and published sources, the author examines hunting and wildlife conservation from various social and ethnic perspectives, and also in different geographical contexts, extending our understanding of the link between shikar and governance.
Museums and Social Responsibility
Museums and Social Responsibility examines inherent contradictions within and effecting museum practice in order to outline a museological theory of how museums are important cultural practices in themselves and how museums shape the socio-cultural dynamics of modern societies, especially our attitudes and understandings about human agency and creative potential. Museums are libraries of objects, presenting thematic justification that dominant concepts of normativity and speciality, as well as attitudes of cultural deprecation. By sorting culture into hierarchies of symbolic value, museums cloak themselves in supposed objectivity, delivered with the passion of connoisseurship and the surety ...
Colonialism and Wildlife
This book delves into the history of the commercialization of wildlife in India. It examines the colonial strategies that were employed in the commodification of wildlife resources specifically for lucrative domestic and international trade during the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It looks at how and why the colonial administration paid special emphasis on hunting and game sports which largely contributed to commodity capitalism in the form of taxidermy and wildlife exports. The author also critically analyses the wildlife laws and regulations promulgated by the colonial administration, such as the elephant protection act, birds and fisheries act, the forest acts, and studies how they have systematically brought wildlife under state control with a commercial motive. An important contribution to the environmental history of India, this book is an essential interdisciplinary resource for scholars and researchers of history, colonialism, wildlife studies, economic history, ecological studies, environmental history, Indian history, South Asian studies, and development studies.
The Nature of Endangerment in India
Perhaps no category of people on earth has been perceived as more endangered, nor subjected to more conservation efforts, than indigenous peoples. And in India, calls for the conservation of Adivasi culture have often reached a fever pitch, especially amongst urban middle-class activists and global civil society groups. But are India's 'tribes' really endangered? Do they face extinction? And is this threat somehow comparable to the threat of extinction facing tigers and other wildlife? Combining years of fieldwork and archival research with rigorous theoretical interrogations, this book examines fears of interlinking biological and cultural (or biocultural) diversity loss-particularly in reg...
Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India
This book sheds new light on the dynamics of the colonial encounter between Britain and India. It highlights how various analytical approaches to this encounter can be creatively mobilised to rethink entanglements of memory and identity emerging from British rule in the subcontinent. This volume reevaluates central, long-standing debates about the historical impact of the British Raj by deviating from hegemonic and top-down civilizational perspectives. It focuses on interactions, relations and underlying meanings of the colonial experience. The narratives of memory, identity and the legacy of the colonial encounter are woven together in a diverse range of essays on subjects such as colonial and nationalist memorials; British, Eurasian, Dalit and Adivasi identities; regional political configurations; and state initiatives and patterns of control. By drawing on empirically rich, regional and chronological historical studies, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers of history, political science, colonial studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
