1. Mon 3 Feb: Course intro & India and the Environmental History of Imperialism

Below you will find reflections on the newly published book Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers: 1790-1840 (2014) and the following discussion with the author Gunnel Cederlöf  at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University on the 3 February 2014.

As a Global Environmental History student what I find most interesting and useful in Cederlöfs research is not so much of the actual events in the region of East-North Bengal during the rule of the British East India Company, even though this is interesting and well written, but the critical approach of how to understand space and change in history in general. Cederlöf makes three points regarding the quality of historical research and the selection, collection and interpretation of historical data. 
First, the quality of historical research is defined largely by which sources and data is seen as useful and also how it is used and collected. For example the North-East of Bengal is a monsoon region and this must be be taken in to account when interpreting the historical data found in the archives such as revenue reports and maps. Many of the maps which were made and used by the British East India Company are of dry land mainly. However in the monsoon periods there is little dry land as large parts of the area is covered in water in long periods. To understand a monsoon region Cederlöf argues that ”water” has to be understood.  Disregarding the significance to understand a key element in an environment makes useless historical accounts. An extreme example of this is that of the agrarian historians, made by Cederlöf at the seminar, who mostly used revenue reports and maps from the archives disregarding that the areas of interest were continually flooded and were deeply impacted on by climate and meandering river systems. 
Second, Cederlöf claims that many scholars make their research in good weather conditions disregarding the natural conditions of an area and takes the example of good-weather anthropologist. This shows a disregard for nature as a dynamic and important force in for culture and history. Natural conditions are part of a historical context. It became very clear in Cederlöfs research that the historical context can’t only be found in the archives but that it is of great importance to visit a research area many times during various weather conditions.
Third, historians have a tendency ”to do history backwards”. In the case of the British Empire Cederlöf argues that there is a tendency to look to the peak of the empire and project this view of the Empire on the whole period of when the British were a part of ruling the North-East. In the period when the EIC ruled the North-West, as granted by the Moghul, little resources were actually spent on ruling as the EIC were a corporation and most of the men in charge of the administration where foremost in India to make money, not to govern territory. It was not the case of making India British but to bring in the revenue and trade of the Empire.The North-Eastern frontier was in this period regarded as an expansion line for trade. This mercantile rationale on space and administration had a huge influence on how the Britain could expand into an Empire.
The conclusion I make is that to make a qualified analysis of the social ecology of the past  one can not ignore the natural conditions of a space nor how how the world revealed itself to different groups within the research period.

Current Themes and Debates in Global Environmental History
Yu Wang
History department&Global Environmental History
wytt2002@sina.com
Reflection 1 (2014-02-04)—
Cederlöf, G. 2013. Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity

Cederlof, G’s book Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity focus on the “North-Eastern Fronties”of India which was the colony of The British. At that time India was govern by the British East India Company(EIC). And as it known that , The EIC has played an important role in the British colony history in the past 200 years, especially to India and China. Colonial rule in India has an important role for the British , the British India is not only important for cheap raw materials , but also the important product dumping ground for Britain , for British India can not be replaced with other colonial role for economic reason. And also,. British India was very important strategic position geographically , At that time India including today’s India, Pakistan , Bangladesh and other now bordering India several small countries in South Asia. the guardian of the Indian Ocean to the Pacific traffic arteries is forefront of British aggression in Southeast Asia . The last important role is concern about China., the India’s environment was very suitable for planting opium in some areas , and bying river to take from opium from Indian port to China is also very convenient. , India is the UK ‘s main opium producing area in Asia, Britain earned a lot from the opium trade with China. and actually the opium trade with China is an important means of development of capitalism in the early British capital accumulation . A fact couldn’t be ignore was, the British War is a war between China and the East India Company . Those British troops were from India , not from the United Kingdom.
The last part of the book is about “The Fiscal Subject and the Absent Citizen”. This rule caused the traditional Indian society’s collapse and disintegration of feudal political and economic system. But were they all bad?, Marx had done this evaluation of British rule in India as, “the British social revolution in Hindustan caused entirely by a very vile interests reason, and those ways to get these benefits are also very stupid. But the problem is that , if the social situation in Asia without a fundamental revolution, could humans change their own destiny? If not, then, no matter how much offense the British did, it still caused this revolution, after all, is to serve as an unconscious tool of history. ”
In the end, this is my first course about enviromental history, I have no idea about the subject. But Gunnel’s book gives me a new idea to broad my view, enviroment is not such far away from our life like what I thought before.

Nisveta Dedić. Current Debates. Seminar 1, reflection 1. 4th of February 2014

The book “Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers” is an overwhelming read; it almost seems as if the topic of the book, which is defined by fluidity and dynamic ecological conditions of north-eastern Bengal, is reflected in the structure of the text. The text does not aim to give a totalizing account of the polity-forming process and questions the conventional history writing within the frames of nation states and essentialized categories of colonizer-colonized. Having an interest in philosophy of law, I mostly followed the thread of subject formation in bureaucratic practices, since it offers a unique insight in how the mercantile corporation the East Indian Company (EIC) moulded common law with custom-based local practices to create a civil bureaucratic apparatus and how a corporate bureaucracy driven by heterogenous interests differs from centralizing tendencies of state bureaucracy. Thus my reading of the text was primarily read through my interest in legal history, but the text also pushed me to question my preconceived separation of legal history from ecological conditions. What seem as stable legal categories in codified law, such as legal subject, private property, legal and/or political rights of subjects, came under serious questioning in the region characterized by drastically shifting landscape and consequently livelihoods depending on it, which renders the European cadaster-like land assessment quite irrelevant.
It is precisely the rigid revenue system created by the EIC that was not in accord with ground realities that challenged and halted the initial optimism of the EIC officers, who believed that an entreprenurial spirit and a simple bureaucratic fix will result in stable revenue and clear land rights. The Mughal Grant ceded to the EIC not only profits from revenue but also jurisdiction of the territory, but the corporate bureaucracy was alien to the social network framed by the Mughal administraton and consequently did not manage to construct a flexible apparatus. According to Cederlöf the primary intention of the so-called Permanent Settlement of 1793, was avoiding litigations arising from landholding rights disputes (p.130). But ignorance and downright denial of custom-based property rights resulted in fragmentation of land (cultivators became smallholders), thus adding to the chaos. Attempts at universalizing property rights on the basis of specific tribal societies that were comparable to European definition of legal subjects (male with property) resulted in access to land enabled by blood relation only and annuling of matrilineal inheritance (p.121). As time progressed, it became clear to EIC commissioners (Scott the foremost) that the revenue system based on classification unattuned to local social and ecological conditions, is inefficient. However, costum-based rights proponents (Orientalist or pragmatic) were disregarded and the British Governance simply annexed the unassessed land. After the Charter Act of 1833, when the EIC lost monopoly in China and tea trade, the EIC pushed on the north-eastern frontier towards the autonomous kingdoms. The land revenue system was inefficient again, because it did not correspond to shifting cultivation practices and the conditions of landscapes.
I believe the dysfunctionality of the corporate bureaucracy is partly due to its mercantile characteristics that was not able and was also unwilling to create ruler-subject relations that would not be determined only by fiscal advantages (the fiscal subject as termed by Cederlöf). This subject formation resulted in excluding the majority of population out of the polity network and especially people without property, bound labourers and women. The transfer of European codified law that was at the time undergoing major shifts (the emerging of discourse of rights) to a colonial polity was a differentiated, gradual and selective process; the abstract administrative revenue classification had to be remoulded in time- and space-bound conditions, thus internal strife between the EIC commisioners and the centralized Calcutta government was not unknown.

Markus Nyström
Reflection paper 1
Current debates, 2014-02-03, ntroduction/Gunnel Cederlöf’s lacture

It’s interesting to read and hear about the complexities in the establishment of a colonial rule in the case of the early era of British rule in India as. Colonialism is naturally a very large subject but is often treated and talked about as something homogenous, and well-defined both temporally and spatially.
I my reading of Cederlöf’s book, there was a rather short section early on in the book that caught my attention in particular. It is graphic and telling, and though short, I would like to base my reflection on that section since I believe it points toward something bigger.
The section is the first three pages of chapter 2 (p. 17-19). What’s described was the effects of a powerful earthquake the 2 april 1762 in the Arakan and Chittagong area. Amidst the countless descriptions of the devastation the quake brought, there is the correspondence of the “revenue suerveyors” of the East-India Company. They only had eyes open for the cultivated land and revenue assessment. Cederlöf writes: “While the disaster reports spoke of chaos and represented nature as out of control, revenue and cartographic surveys were in search of a regular, stable and ordered landscape.”
The key words in that sentence are: “were in search of”. The surveyors had a strict method, as it were, guiding their perception and reporting. It as an apt description of how methodological bias blinds you, as a researcher/investigator/surveyor, from portraiting a subject of study fully or truthfully. It’s a healthy reminder and a very apt metaphor for research.
But I want to discuss something larger still. The act of (re-)categorization, of (re-)structuring, (re-)naming the (new) world that the colonialists encountered was in the border zone of science and struggle for colonial power. The work of cartographers and scientists were necessary for the colonial states to appropriate power. Without this knowledge (and this kind of knowledge), territorial colonialism would not have worked. I here combine the acts of research with the act of bureaucratization – including tax systems and the bureaucracy to uphold those systems – since I believe they stem from the same desire to rule and dominate – both nature and people – through an imposed system on knowledge.
It seems, as exemplified by Cederlöf, that there was a structurally demanded urge to put all of reality into the 18th century equivalent of a Windows Excell Document. Everything neatly in boxes of understanding and order. Order means control – not only in the colonial context, but generally – which means that categorization (or “methodological bias”) was a means of control. In other words, the result was control and power. But it is an assumption that the desire for power alone was the source of this urge to categorize.
I believe one could make a valid argument that there lies something deeper, still today, in the scientific/academic urge to order and categorize reality. In performing this ordering, in looking at the world and ignoring chaos and disaster, one is undoubtedly left with a view on reality as predictable, ordered and maybe even benign. I believe, to put it clearly, that this ordering could be a result of existential angst, leading away from faith in religions as both explanation of, as well as salvation from, a world full of dangers and death, to a materialist, secular “faith” in humanity itself.
I’m not implying this to be a good or a bad move. I merely want to point out the existential benefits of seeing the world as “regular, stable and ordered” instead of a place of disaster and chaos. In chaos, death is always close. In order, the inevetebility of death can be kept at bay.
It’s interesting in this regard to think about the role of science today. Of course, science is still a means of power and (today perhaps more than in the 18th century) technological prowess. But in the increasingly secular, or atheist, and globalizing world view of capitalism, there is undoubtedly an existential void to fill. Is it so unlikely that science is vital in filling that void? I think it’s an interesting thought experiment since it would mean that science is not only about knowledge and power, but an existential endevour.

Reflection on Gunnel Cederlof Seminar, Lecture and Reading
4th February 2014
Archie Davies

Maps and Borders

Central to Gunnel Cederlof’s thesis is an analysis of the interaction and disjunction between British attempts at exercising power and the physical realities of the region of North-East India under study. In this context she draws attention to the role of maps and map-making in the establishment of borders (of multiple types) in the region. She argues that there is an important difference between a border constructed out of linked points – which she associates with the mercantile expansionist border-making of the East India Company – and a border which manifests as a physical line. She argues that in the case of political or state borders, which she conceives of as continuous lines, “political power [is] correlated with space” while in the case of the mercantile borders “military and strategic concerns resulted in maps of interlinked strongholds.” She suggests (broadly speaking) that we could understand the development of political boundaries in North-East India as the former developing into the latter over time.

The case that there is a change in the nature of these borders over time is fairly convincingly put forward. However, it is not absolutely clear what the fundamental difference is between the two types of borders which she posits. Whilst it is comprehensively demonstrated in the book that a mercantile motivation leads to a different treatment of space and expansion in North-East India, the way in which this connects back into the nature of the borders is less clear. Though different subjects within what she describes as the ‘dual polities’ of the area in the period had different experiences of the operation of power, as explained for example through the question of land rights and fiscal subjectivity, it appears that this is less a consequence of one type of border over another, than of differing exercises of power – through governance, taxation, land control etc – within the space of the North-East. Though the analysis of the different processes undertaken in the course of establishing borders is clear, as is the historical import of different types of borders, the socio-political consequences of different types of borders is less obvious. Therefore it seems worth questioning what the substantive difference is between the two. After all, most political borders (with some very small number of exceptions) are not physical, man-made walls, but lines on the map and interlinked strongholds, which blurs the differentiation which Cederlof posits. She emphasises that the border was constructed through natural, rather than human interventions. Whilst some borders are aligned with natural features, even these are of course arbitrary human distinctions placed on the landscape. How artificial or natural the border lines are is relative rather than absolute. As is the fixity and continuity of the border over space.

What the consequences of different types of borders are is not fully considered. It would be interesting to consider, for instance, what the difference would be for a subject in the period between crossing a ‘mercantile’ border constructed of interlinked strongholds, and crossing a ‘political’ border understood as delimiting a political space.

This consideration of multiple types of borders, and the question of how borders manifest themselves within political spaces is of topical interest. The nature of surveillance and technological bureaucracy has rendered borders a more invasive concept. For instance in the United Kingdom, the government is currently considering proposals to introduce responsibilities for landlords to check the immigration status of tenants, a controversial move which would extend borders into and throughout the political space of the state. This type of border is of course of a different order to that discussed by Cederlof, but it is an example of how borders in the 21st century have developed. In this case it is clear that the nature of the border itself as a fixed and active metaphor for an exclusive national identity with associated rights is important in understanding the nature of political life for those within the space delimited by the border. The nature of the border therefore has consequences. How this dynamic plays out in North-East India in the period under study would be interesting to understand further.

Reply on Mirabel Joshi’s reflection posted on February 4th, 14:41

Mirabel makes a very good point in emphasizing Gunnel’s recommendations for historical research: without taking nature into account the whole picture is incomplete. A historian can not claim to understand the past of the Northeast Bengal region without including nature in its various forms as a subject of inquiry: it is the monsoon floodings which change the livelihoods of local communities constantly, it is the water flows which make trade through this region possible and it is the wavy, inaccessible landscape which led to a quite arbitrary border between today’s India and Bangladesh. Nature DOES change over time and it influences human thinking and behaviour inevitably. In this sense, Collingwood is proven wrong in his anthropocentric conception of history and every historian is well advised to broaden her scope to the non-human drivers of the past.

Mirabel’s third point of reflection is noteworthy as well and can be extended to the nation state as the institutional background of most historical analyses. Every historian of today is born and raised in the “environment” of the modern state, with all its practices to govern individuals on a fixed territory. This raises the question of how a historian can reenact the thoughts of someone who has never experienced the state as a political institution before; or how it might feel for someone who is supposed to “build” a new state on a territory and people that are used to other forms of governing. “To do history forwards” entails to not take any institutional environment for granted but to conceive it as something that had become – and has to be rearticulated to stay in the present.

Reply to Wang Yu’s reflection by Sabbath Sunday

Irrespective of your worry that you are a new student in the subject of environmental history, you have already pointed out very important issues in your reflection of Gunnel’s book. The collapse of the traditional Indian societies at the hands of the invading capitalist imperialists, who were struggling among themselves to control North East India, indicates a transition from subsistence to commercialized modes of production. This is a development that some environmental historians argue that it increases pressure on the environment because more resources are required as raw materials for growing industries.
Also you mentioned the ‘social revolution’ by the British, as an ‘unconscious tool in the construction of environmental history’, which is a very important point. I agree with you in a sense that the introduction of feudal political and economic systems not only contributed to increased exploitation of environment but also changed society’s perception on it. This is what D. Carlolyn Merchant has referred to as ‘ecological revolution’ because of how different societies can change their relationship to nature. Apart from social and economic changes, you could have supported your point with the factor that the imperialist who came to this region also brought with them plant and animal species which were introduced in the environment, e.g new crops and weeds from Latin America.
Finally another point which I can develop from your opening reflection is that the factor that North East India was naturally endowed with massive wealth, several imperialists were attracted, like the British, the Mughal, Ahom, Chinese, Burmese and others who took away their booties. The region was never been the same again as before because of ecological and economic exploitation which put the environment at a great risk.