Governing monsoon landscapes EIC expansion on its North-eastern Frontier in the early 19th century

<strong>Centre for Historical Studies School of Social Sciences</strong> a Lecture <strong>Governing monsoon landscapes EIC expansion on its North-eastern Frontier in the early 19th century</strong> <strong>Gunnel Cederlöf </strong> Professor of History Uppsala University <strong>3:00 PM, Wednesday</strong> This talk takes a new view on the process of forming British colonial rule during the unsettled half-century from the 1790s to the 1830s. To understand these transformations we have to revitalise agrarian and political history by rereading it through climate history. We also need to revise spatial frames and see beyond the boundaries of continental and nation state India.The EIC was, first and formost, a mercantile corporation that aimed at getting in command of the millennium-old over-land commercial routes that connected India and China. The British East India Company's northeastern frontier span the Brahmaputra to Burma and beyond. Simultaneously, the Mughal diwani grant (1765) compelled the EIC to govern people and territory. The two interests - trade and government - often clashed. I will discuss the incompatibility of governance and the ever-changing landscapes in a region defined by the monsoon. When rivers moved and land was inundated for months, any attempt to form a uniform administration tended to clash with the hybrid landscapes and waterscapes. Characteristic of this period is the daily compromise and mediation through administrative and military practice which shaped colonial polities and subject formation when the British Empire took root in Asia. Gunnel Cederlöf, is Professor of History at Uppsala University since 2011. From 2014 to 2015, she is a research fellow at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. During this period, she is also a guest professor at the Linnaeus University, the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, and a researcher at Uppsala University, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. From Sept. 2014 to Sept. 2019, she is a Visiting Professor at School of Humanities, Shiv Nadar University, India. She has been a visiting scholar at SCAS, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (2000), Oxford University (2000-01), Jawaharlal Nehru University (2010), and Calcutta University (stints 2004-2013). She was the Director of the Forum for Advanced Studies in Arts, Languages, and Theology at Uppsala University (2006-08. Her works include Bonds Lost: Subordination, Conflict and Mobilisation in Rural South India (1997).