Agrarian System of Medieval Assam


Book Description




Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826–2000


Book Description

This book presents a comprehensive account of the transformation of Assam's forests and ecology from early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It locates present-day ecological conflicts in the colonial era when contest over forest, land, and resource began to take new shape. Arupjyoti Saikia delineates how forest resources in Assam were mapped and intergrated with mechant capitalism since the early nineteenth century. He shows how imperial forestry practices led to changes in traditional resource utilization patterns. The book also examines the political economy of conservation practices. It explores the question of law and conservation, role of institutions and organizations, and the changing role of the forests in imperial economy. The book argues how the making of forest policy in the postcolonial period was defind by the complexities of the political matrix. It discusses plantation, silvicultural practices, protection and regeneration of forests, and livlihood practices. The author also analyses public debates surrounding ecology and environmental changes in conservation practices after the 1980 Act.










Planter Raj to Swaraj


Book Description

This is a re-issue of Amalendu Guha's influential work on Assam and the Northeast, 30 years after its original publication, with a new introduction by the author. Guha's analysis extends from Assam in 1826, the year of the British annexation, to the post-independence conditions in 1950. The peculiar features of the region's plantation economy; the imperialism of opium cultivation; the problems of a stready influx of immigrants and the backlash of a local linguistic chauvinism; peasants' and workers' struggles; the evolution of the ryot sabhas, the Congress, trade unions and later of the Communist Party - such are the themes that have received attention in this book, alongside an analysis of legislative and administrative processes.The narrative is structured chronologically within an integrated Marxist framework of historical perspective, and is based on a wide range of primary sources.




Approaches to History


Book Description

History as a social science is arguably more self-reflective than associated disciplines in that family. Other social scientists seem to see little reason to look beyond the paradigm they are developing in the present times. Historians on the other hand, tend to depend on the cumulative process of the development of their craft and the fund of accumulated knowledge. Yet, while this is acknowledged in the practice of research, Historiography in itself as a subject of study has rarely found its place in the syllabi of Indian universities. Knowledge of Historiography is taken for granted when a scholar plunges into research. In an attempt to address this lacuna, the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) has planned a series of volumes on Historiography comprising articles by subject specialists commissioned by the ICHR. The first volume in the series, Approaches to History: Essays in Indian Historiography brings to the readers the first fruits of that endeavour. While the essays encompass areas of research presently at the frontiers of new research, scholars will also find the bibliographies accompanying the essays of significant appeal.




Nationalist Upsurge in Assam


Book Description

Contributed articles focussing on the role of Assam in the Indian freedom movement from 1857-1947.




Hunter, Peasant, Rebel


Book Description

British Assam holds an important place in the history of the British Empire in South Asia. This is especially so in the context of colonial frontier- making. It is in this regard that the book examines what it culturally meant to be a hunter, peasant or rebel between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries in the British Assam frontier. The book highlights that these figures are of conceptual significance. While the figures were of contrastive nature, the complexity of underlying relations through and in which British colonialism constituted and reproduced itself in Assam could be uncovered from a study of these contrastive figures. Using a wide spectrum of archival sources, the hunters’ memoirs, the peasants’ ballads and a rebel’s worldview are examined as the cultural forms through which one can study these relations that generated the sense of colonial reality in these figures. Through these issues, the book examines what constituted the nature of the British Assam frontier, and how colonialism and capitalism shaped and reproduced an imperial frontier. Part of the Empire and Frontiers book series, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of history, cultural studies, anthropology, literary studies, frontiers and borderland studies and South Asian studies.




Recent Books