Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:05:59.791Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Space between Nation and Empire: The Making and Unmaking of Eastern Bengal and Assam Province, 1905–1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2015

Iftekhar Iqbal
Get access

Abstract

The article examines the spatial turn in the contestations between the Indian nation and the British empire, as manifested in the creation and annulment of a new province at the turn of the twentieth century. The province, Eastern Bengal and Assam, was a culmination of the British Indian empire's eastern gaze since the early nineteenth century across northeastern India, Burma, and southern China. While the new province was expected to facilitate the empire's eastward transregional engagements, the national resistance to the scheme was influenced more by the comfort zone of the agro-ecological regime of the plains of the Bengal Delta, imagined to be capable of sustaining the Bengali nation in decline. The province was dismantled within six years in the face of the razing national movement, but a century later its legacy returns as India looks east.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 69 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Banerjee, Prathama. 2005. “The Work of Imagination: Temporality and Nationhood in Colonial Bengal.” In Subaltern Studies XII: Muslims, Dalits and the Fabrications of History, eds. Mayaram, Shail, Pandian, M. S. S., and Skaria, Ajay. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Basu, Subho. 2010. “The Dialectics of Resistance: Colonial Geography, Bengali Literati and the Racial Mapping of Indian Identity.” Modern Asian Studies 4(1):53–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertuzzo, Elisa T. 2009. Fragmented Dhaka: Analysing Everyday Life with Henri Lefebvre's Theory of Production of Space. Berlin: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Boulger, Demetrius C. 1901. “India's Interest in China.” Fortnightly Review 70:690–99.Google Scholar
Bradley-Birt, F. B. 1906. The Romance of an Eastern Capital. London: Smith Elder & Co.Google Scholar
Brown, Francis Carnac. 1847. Free Trade & the Cotton Question with Reference to India: Being a Memorial from the British Merchants of Cochin, to the Right Hon. Sir John Hobhouse, Bart., M.P. President of the Board of Control. London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange.Google Scholar
Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra. 1926. Pather dabi [The demand of the road or Revolutionary road]. Calcutta: Umaprasad Mukherjee.Google Scholar
Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra. 1970. “Smritikath” [Memoirs]. In Sarat-sahitya-sangraha [Sarat literary collections], vol. 10. Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar.Google Scholar
Colebrook, H. T. 1822. “On the Geology of the North-eastern Border of Bengal.” Transactions of the Geological Society 1(1):132–40 (series 2).Google Scholar
Cotton, Arthur. 1866–67. “On Communication between India and China by the Line of the Burhampooter.” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 11(6):255–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curzon, George Nathaniel. 1902. Speeches by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, vol. 2, 1900–1902. Calcutta: Government Printing Press, India.Google Scholar
Curzon, George Nathaniel. 1903. Mss Eur F111/323: Minute by His Excellency the Viceroy on Territorial Redistribution in India. Part II, Bengal. India Office Records. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Curzon, George Nathaniel. 1903–5. Mss Eur F111/247a. India Office Records. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
De, Amalendu. 2003. “Sri Aurobindo's Role in Indian Freedom Struggle: An Assessment from Different Perceptions.” Presidential Address 2002–3. Kolkata: Asiatic Society of Bengal.Google Scholar
Dickinson, . 1847. Panorama of the City of Dacca. London: Dickinson.Google Scholar
D'oyly, Charles. 1830. Antiquities of Dacca. London: John Landseer.Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 2010. “Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region of Our Times.” Journal of Asian Studies 69(4):963–83.Google Scholar
Duckworth, Henry. 1861. New Commercial Route to China (Capt. Sprye's Proposition). London: Georg Philip and Son.Google Scholar
Eastern Bengal and Assam Era. 1906. February 14.Google Scholar
Fuller, J. B. 1902. Secretary to the Government of India: In Proceedings of the Government of India, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, no. 1-50-2, Calcutta, 10 January 1902, (Resolution), in Government of Bengal, Revenue Dept.: Land Revenue February 1902, file: 16-S-4/1-2, no. 39-40, in National Archives of Bangladesh: Rev (L), wooden Bundle: 47, List: 17.Google Scholar
Fuller, J. B. 1903. Government of India. MSS Eur 111/247c: Government of India to John Broderick, Secretary of State, 3 Dec 1903. India Office Records. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Gandhi, M. K. 1984. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 5. Delhi: Government of India.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hay, John Ogilvy. 1875. A Map Shewing the Various Routes Connecting China with India and Europe through Burmah and Developing the Trade of Eastern Bengal, Burmah & China. London: Edward Stanford.Google Scholar
Huttmann, William. 1844. “On Chinese and European Maps of China.” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 14:111–27.Google Scholar
Iqbal, Iftekhar. 2010. The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change 1840-1943. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri. 1997. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ludden, David. 2010. Rethinking 1905: Spatial Inequality, Uneven Development and Nationalism. Kolkata: Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group.Google Scholar
Ludden, David. 2012. “Spatial Inequity and National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam.” Modern Asian Studies 46(3):483–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macpherson, W. C. 1904. MSS Eur 111/47c: Officiating Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, to Secretary to Government of India, 6 April. India Office Records. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Majumdar, Jadunath. [1918] 2007. Hindu samajer samashya [Problems of the Hindu society]. Kolkata: Kaliprasanna chattopadhyay. http://www.dli.gov.in/cgi-bin/DBscripts/allmetainfo.cgi?barcode=4990010228471 (accessed October 22, 2014).Google Scholar
Manjapra, Kris. 2011. “From Imperial to International Horizons: A Hermeneutic Study of Bengali Modernism.” Modern Intellectual History 8(2):327–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molla, M. K. U. 1981. The New Province of Eastern Bengal & Assam, 1905–1911. Rajshahi: Institute of Bangladesh Studies.Google Scholar
Osmany, Shireen Hasan. 2007. British Policy and the Port of Chittagong 1892-1912. Dhaka: University Grants Commission.Google Scholar
Rennell, James. 1781. “An Account of the Ganges and Burrampooter Rivers.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 71:87–114.Google Scholar
Rice, W. C. 1904. Officiating Chief Secretary to Government of Burma, to L W Dane, Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, Rangoon 2 May 1904. India Office Records, F111/396. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Risley, H. H. 1905. Notes, 1/9/4, Government of India, Home, Public A, Feb. 1905, Proceeding no. 155. India Office Records. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Pitambar. 1910. Jati-vikash [Evolution of caste]. Calcutta: n.p.Google Scholar
Sartori, Andrew. 2008. Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Schendel, Willem Van. 2005. The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shakespear, L. W. 1914. History of Upper Assam, Upper Burmah and North-Eastern Frontier. London: Macmillan and Co.Google Scholar
Sharma, Jayeeta. 2011. Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of Imperial India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sladen, E. B. 1869. Official Narrative of and Papers Connected with the Expedition to Explore the Trade Routes to China via Bhamo. Rangoon: British Burma Press.Google Scholar
Sprye, Richard. 1858. The British and China Railway: From Her Majesty's Port of Rangoon, in the Bay of Bengal, through Pegue & Burmah, to the Yunnan Province of China: With Loop-lines to Siam & Cambogia, Tonquin & Cochin-China. London: privately printed.Google Scholar
Taylor, James. 1840. A Sketch of the Topography and Statistics of Dacca. Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann, Military Orphan Press for the Government.Google Scholar
Times (London). 1899. September 6, 5.Google Scholar
Walsh, Warren B. 1943. “The Yunnan Myth.” Far Eastern Quarterly 2(3):272–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Michael. 2006. Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis: An Abridgement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Yang, Bin. 2008. Between Winds and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar