Manjeet Baruah – författare

Focusing on the geographies between the Mekong and the Indus, this book brings objects to the centre of enquiry in the understanding of modern Asian frontiers. It explores how a range of objects have historically been significant bearers and agents of frontier making. For instance, how are objects connected to aspects of state making, social change, everyday life, diplomacy, political and ecological worlds, capital, forms of violence, resistances, circulations, and aesthetic expressions?This book seeks to interrogate and understand the dynamism of frontiers from the vantage point of objects such as salt, rubber, tea, guns, silk scarves, horses, and opium. It attempts to explore objects as sites of encounter, mediation, or dislocation between the social and the spatial. The book not only locates objects in the specificities of frontier spaces, but it also looks at how they are produced, circulated, and come to be intricately linked to a wide range of people, institutions, networks, and geographies. In the process, it explores how objects traverse and come to inhabit multiple historical, cultural, and geographical scales. This book will be of interest to researchers and academics working in areas of history, social and cultural anthropology, Asian studies, frontiers and borderland studies, cultural studies, political and economic studies, and museum studies.

This book brings together essays on North East India from across disciplines to explore new understandings of the colonial and contemporary realities of the region. Departing from the usual focus on identity and politics, it offers fresh representations from history, social anthropology, culture, literature, politics, performance and gender. Through the lens of modern practices, the essays in this volume engage with diverse issues, including state-making practices, knowledge production and its politics, history writing, colonialism, role of capital, institutions, changing locations of orality and modernity, production and reception of texts, performances and literatures, social change and memory, violence and gender relations, along with their wider historical, geographical and ideational mappings. In the process, they illustrate how the specificities of the region can become useful sites to interrogate global phenomena and processes — for instance, in what ways ideas and practices of modernity played an important role in framing the region and its people. Further, the volume underlines the complex ways in which the past came to be imagined, produced and contested in the region.With its blend of inter-disciplinary approach, analytical models and perspectives, this book will be useful to scholars, researchers and general readers interested in North East India and those working on history, frontiers and borderlands, gender, cultural studies and literature.

The study of Assamese literature has so far been in terms of the history of the Assamese language. This book is a history of the narratives written in Assamese language and its relation to the process of region formation. The literature dealt with ranges from pre-colonial chronicles, ballads and drama to modern genres of fiction and critical writing in Assamese language. Taking the Brahmaputra valley and Assamese literature as case studies, the author attempts to link literature, its nature and use, to processes of region formation, arguing that such a study needs to take the context of historical geography into consideration. The book views region formation in north-east India as a dialectical process, that is, the dialectic between the shared and the distinct in inter-group and community relations. It borrows an anthropological approach to study written narratives and cultures so as to locate such narratives in specific processes of region formation.

Empire building in British India was inseparably tied to the processes of frontier-making and the creation of boundaries. Through a range of complex practices and developments, the constitution of these spaces took shape at various historical conjunctures. The making of these spaces was also shaped by a variety of imperial concerns, including local and global processes, connections, and entanglements. Focusing on the period between the 19th and the early 20th centuries, this book looks at how the dynamics of frontier and boundary creation were shaped by a variety of agents, institutions, infrastructure and technologies, events, economy, travel, forms of representation, and imperial rivalries. The role of capital, war, and violence was also intrinsic to the creation of such spaces. Further, societies in these spaces responded to these processes in various ways. The book examines how they negotiated and mediated these complex developments of modern space-making in multiple ways at the margins of empire.Part of the Empire and Frontiers series, this book will be of interest to researchers and readers of history, anthropology, cultural studies, social and cultural history, frontiers, boundaries and borderland studies, Himalayan studies, and studies of commodities and circulations.

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.

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.

Empire building in British India was inseparably tied to the processes of frontier-making and the creation of boundaries. Through a range of complex practices and developments, the constitution of these spaces took shape at various historical conjunctures. The making of these spaces was also shaped by a variety of imperial concerns, including local and global processes, connections, and entanglements. Focusing on the period between the 19th and the early 20th centuries, this book looks at how the dynamics of frontier and boundary creation were shaped by a variety of agents, institutions, infrastructure and technologies, events, economy, travel, forms of representation, and imperial rivalries. The role of capital, war, and violence was also intrinsic to the creation of such spaces. Further, societies in these spaces responded to these processes in various ways. The book examines how they negotiated and mediated these complex developments of modern space-making in multiple ways at the margins of empire.Part of the Empire and Frontiers series, this book will be of interest to researchers and readers of history, anthropology, cultural studies, social and cultural history, frontiers, boundaries and borderland studies, Himalayan studies, and studies of commodities and circulations.

This book brings together essays on North East India from across disciplines to explore new understandings of the colonial and contemporary realities of the region. Departing from the usual focus on identity and politics, it offers fresh representations from history, social anthropology, culture, literature, politics, performance and gender. Through the lens of modern practices, the essays in this volume engage with diverse issues, including state-making practices, knowledge production and its politics, history writing, colonialism, role of capital, institutions, changing locations of orality and modernity, production and reception of texts, performances and literatures, social change and memory, violence and gender relations, along with their wider historical, geographical and ideational mappings. In the process, they illustrate how the specificities of the region can become useful sites to interrogate global phenomena and processes — for instance, in what ways ideas and practices of modernity played an important role in framing the region and its people. Further, the volume underlines the complex ways in which the past came to be imagined, produced and contested in the region.With its blend of inter-disciplinary approach, analytical models and perspectives, this book will be useful to scholars, researchers and general readers interested in North East India and those working on history, frontiers and borderlands, gender, cultural studies and literature.

Focusing on the geographies between the Mekong and the Indus, this book brings objects to the centre of enquiry in the understanding of modern Asian frontiers. It explores how a range of objects have historically been significant bearers and agents of frontier making. For instance, how are objects connected to aspects of state making, social change, everyday life, diplomacy, political and ecological worlds, capital, forms of violence, resistances, circulations, and aesthetic expressions?This book seeks to interrogate and understand the dynamism of frontiers from the vantage point of objects such as salt, rubber, tea, guns, silk scarves, horses, and opium. It attempts to explore objects as sites of encounter, mediation, or dislocation between the social and the spatial. The book not only locates objects in the specificities of frontier spaces, but it also looks at how they are produced, circulated, and come to be intricately linked to a wide range of people, institutions, networks, and geographies. In the process, it explores how objects traverse and come to inhabit multiple historical, cultural, and geographical scales. This book will be of interest to researchers and academics working in areas of history, social and cultural anthropology, Asian studies, frontiers and borderland studies, cultural studies, political and economic studies, and museum studies.