This book goes beyond the famous tea and reveals the true impact of Britain's takeover of Assam, India in the nineteenth century. Blending social and economic history, this is an illuminating work that will fascinate anybody with an interest in the history of India or Britain's colonial past.

A history of the colonial tea plantation regime in Assam, which brought more than one million migrants to the region in northeast India, irrevocably changing the social landscape.

An innovative account of how distinctive forms of colonial power and knowledge developed at the territorial fringes of British India. Thomas Simpson considers the role of frontier officials as surveyors, cartographers and ethnographers, military violence in frontier regions and the impact of the frontier experience on colonial administration.

Attempts To Analyse The Britsh Forest Policy From 1864-1947 With Focus On Assam. With Focus On Assam Traces The Genesis And Development Of The Policy And Examines The Socio-Economic And Environmental Impact Of The People And State As A Whole. 7 Chapters Including Conclusion - Appendices - Bibliography - Index - Glossary.

Based on original sources, this volume is a pioneering work in the study of the growth and development of judicial administration in Assam since the beginning of the East India Company’s rule in the province till it was separated from the Bengal Presidency in 1874. In view of the fact that Assam had its own laws and codes different from those of other provinces of British India, this work is unique and pioneering in its reach. Assam was administered under non-regulation system which had its origin in the neighbouring province of Bengal and was governed by a mixed system of local and regulation laws. In the administration of civil justice, the Bengal regulations were entirely dispensed with, while in criminal administration the regulations were followed more or less. Since the occupation of the province by the Company’s government till 1837 the fundamental drawback of the entire judicial administration was the want of a definite code of law, the absence of which confused the administrators in delivering justice. It was only in 1837 that rules for the civil and criminal administration, popularly known as the Assam Code, were drafted and judicial administration in the province found a sound footing. The presentation and analysis of the laws and codes prepared by the Government of Bengal in its executive capacity in consultation with the local authorities in Assam is the most distinctive feature of this comprehensive work. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

The book especially deals with the peasant unrest and uprisings in the erstwhile three districts of Assam viz. Kamrup, Darrang, and Nowgong from 1858 to 1894. The year 1858 has been taken as a starting point, as it has a special importance in the history of the British India. After the Great Mutiny of 1857, Assam, like other parts of India, went into the hands of the British Crown in 1858. The colonial government decided to augment the rate of revenue on land from this year with a view to meet their loss in the Great Mutiny. Hence, this year may be termed as the confrontation Year between the peasants and the government, which continued up to 1894 and even beyond that. The peasant unrest of Assam has fetched some new aspects into focus, and some of them has been referred herein proper places. The specific period (185894) has yet not been studied, albeit lots have been done in this field. It is because of that that it has received not due attention as is given to the same phenomena in other parts of India. This work is an endeavor to give as far as possible a comprehensive, accessible, and crystal picture of a series of complex scenario.

“Coolie” is a generic category for the “unskilled” manual labour. The offering of services for hire had various pre-colonial lineages. In the nineteenth century there was an attempt to recast the term in discursive constructions and material practices for “mobilized-immobilized” labour. Coolie labour was often proclaimed as a deliberate compromise straddling the regimes of the past (slave labour) and the future (free labour). It was portrayed as a stage in a promised transition. The tea plantations of Assam, like many other tropical plantations in South Asia, were inaugurated and formalized during this period. They were initially worked by the locals. In the late 1850s, the locals were replaced by labourers imported from outside the province who were unquestioningly designated “coolies” in the historical literature. Qualifying this framework of transition (local to coolie labour) and introduction (of coolie labour), this study makes a case for the “production” of coolie labour in the history of the colonial-capitalist plantations in Assam. The intention of the research is not to suggest an unfettered agency of colonial-capitalism in defining and “producing” coolies, with an emphasis on the attendant contingencies, negotiations, contestations and crises. The study intervenes in the narratives of an abrupt appearance of the archetypical coolie of the tea gardens (i.e., imported and indentured) and situates this archetype’s emergence, sustenance and shifts in the context of material and discursive processes.