scholarly journals Empire on their Backs: Coolies in the Eastern Borderlands of the British Raj

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (S22) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lipokmar Dzüvichü
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
British Raj ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
The Hill

AbstractIn the nineteenth century, colonial officials relied heavily on coercion to recruit “coolie” labour for “public works” and to provide various support services in the North-East Frontier of British India. “Treaties” with defeated chiefs and the subsequent population enumeration and taxation were strongly oriented to the mobilization of labour for road building and porterage. Forced labour provided the colonial officials with a steady supply of coolies to work on the roads as well as carriers for military expeditions. In mobilizing labour resources, however, colonial officials had to create and draw upon native agents such as the headmen and interpreters who came to play a crucial role in the colonial order of things. Focusing on the Naga Hills, this article will examine the efforts of the colonial state to secure a large circulating labour force, the forms of labour relations that emerged from the need to build colonial infrastructure and the demand for coolies in military expeditions, the response of the hill people to labour conscription and its impact on the hill “tribes”.

scholarly journals Forced Labour, Roads, and Chiefs: The Implementation of the ILO Forced Labour Convention in the Gold Coast

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-476
Author(s):  
Sarah Kunkel
Keyword(s):  
Gold Coast ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
The North ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Indirect Rule

AbstractThis article analyses the implications of the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 on colonial labour policies for road labour carried out under chiefs in the Gold Coast. The British colonial administration implemented a legal application of the convention that allowed the continuation of the existing system of public works. In the Gold Coast, the issue of road labour was most prominent in the North, where chiefs maintained the majority of roads. Indirect rule became crucial in retaining forced labour in compliance with the convention. This article focuses on “hidden strategies” of British colonialism after 1930, contrasting studies of blatant cases of forced labour. The analysis is based on a close scrutiny of the internal discourse among colonial officials on the question of road labour and the Forced Labour Convention.

scholarly journals Eurocentrism, Forced Labour, and Global Migration: A Critical Assessment

2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prabhu P. Mohapatra
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
Migration Literature ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Asian Migration ◽  
European Migration

Recent historiography attempts increasingly to move beyond Eurocentrism. In the field of migration, Adam McKeown's article is a fine example of an attempt to put global migration in a non-Eurocentric perspective. Perhaps its most acute insight is in putting the paradigmatic European migration flows to the Americas in the nineteenth century at par with the mainly intra Asian (south/south-east Asian and north-east Asian) migration flows. McKeown's main target of attack is the unabashed “Euro-centrism” (or rather the “North Atlantic centrism”) of much of the migration literature on the so called age of mass migration. Eurocentrism appears, at least in the way that McKeown presents it, as a set of three interrelated propositions.

VI. Bengali Perceptions of the Raj in the Nineteenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94
Author(s):  
Tapan Raychaudhuri
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
New Class ◽  
The North ◽  
Social Ideology ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Permanent Settlement ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
North Western

The Western educated Bengali intelligentsia was the first group of Indians to collaborate closely with the colonial regime in the governance of the country. As middle-ranking to minor functionaries they were to be found in all parts of the British territories from Burma to the North-western Frontier and as far south as the southernmost tip of the Madras Presidency. No other linguistic cultural group in the subcontinent was ever so extensively involved in the functioning of the Raj – Bengali professionals, doctors, teachers, journalists, lawyers and the like, also followed the flag to all parts of the Indian empire and later beyond its limits and were thus among the direct beneficiaries of Pax Britannica. The economic basis of their livelihood was a direct or indirect product of the colonial state. This was even more true of the new class of landed proprietors with their rights guaranteed by the Permanent Settlement. And then there were those who had collaborated with the Company and its servants in their commercial ventures and, in the process, founded some of the great fortunes of nineteenth-century Calcutta. As is well-known, these varied social groups were not mutually exclusive. Besides, their direct or indirect dependence on the colonial order created a basis for cohesion and a shared social ideology. For a long time that ideology was marked by an almost unqualified gratitude and admiration for the British empire and its creators

Excavations in Caria

1887 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Paton
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
The West ◽  
The Road ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hill ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Way

Mr. Newton in his History of Discoveries, p. 583, gives the following account of an excursion to the peninsula which lies to the west of Budrum (Halikarnassus) where he was then excavating:—We next proceeded to examine the hill with the level top. This hill is called Assarlik.Ascending from this gateway we passed several other lines of ancient walls, and on gaining the summit of the hill found a platform artificially levelled. There are not many traces of walls here. The sides of the hill are so steep on the north and east that they do not require walls. The platform terminates on the north-east in a rock rising vertically for many hundred feet from the valley below. The top of the rock is cut into beds to receive a tower. The view from this platform is magnificent.[After brief mention of several tombs passed in the way down, Mr. Newton proceeds:]The acropolis which anciently crowned the rock at Assarlik must have overlooked a great part of the peninsula and commanded the road from Halicarnassus to Myndus and Termera. From the number of tombs here, and their archaic character, it may be inferred that this was a fortress of some importance in very early times.

Excavation of a homestead of the Roman era at Halangy Down, St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly, 1950

1955 ◽  
Vol 35 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 187-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ashbee
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
North West ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
West Part ◽  
Neighbouring Island ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The Village

Halangy Down (fig. 1) is the lower precipitous slope of the decline from Telegraph Hill (Ordnance Survey B.M. 166. 3 ft.) to the sea at Halangy Porth and Point. Halangy Down and the earlier chambered tomb upon the crest are often referred to locally as ‘Bants Carn’. The true ‘Bants Carn’ is a considerable rock outcrop dominating Halangy Point. This escarpment faces Crow Sound, which separates the north-west part of St. Mary's from the neighbouring island of Tresco. The hill-side is sheltered by the mass of Telegraph Hill from inclement weather from the north-east and east, but is fully exposed to the south-west and west.The existence of an ancient village site here has long been known in the islands. At the close of the last century, the late Alexander Gibson cleared away the underbrush from one of the more prominent huts and made a photographic record of its construction. Shortly after, the late G. Bonsor, of Mairena del Alcor, near Seville, in addition to excavating the chambered tomb, noted a considerable midden together with traces, of prehistoric occupation exposed in the cliffs of Halangy Porth just below the village site. Dr. H. O'Neill Hencken noted Bonsor's description of the midden, and, as nothing was known at the time of the material culture of the ‘village’, he associated the two.

Guns in the Hills: Firearms Circulation along the North-East Frontier of British India, 1860s–1910s

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-435
Author(s):  
Lipokmar Dzüvichü
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Scales ◽  
British India ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Capital Access ◽  
And Diffusion

This article seeks to examine the significance of firearms in the making of the frontier and the ways in which societies on the North-East Frontier of British India encountered and adapted firearms between the 1860s and 1910s. It will study the complex ways in which the entry of firearms was mediated and galvanised by a range of processes such as imperial expansion, the intrusion of capital, access to resources, the role of violence, and the drawing of new borders. In turn, the circulation and diffusion of firearms also engendered a range of other practices and experiences among the societies on the frontier. Moving along various land and river routes, a range of individuals and traders were involved in circulating arms and ammunition into the imperial margins. They, in turn, linked the frontier geographies to markets, ports, and other larger oceanic networks. A focus on the flow of firearms as such illustrates a web of interconnections that straddled multiple scales and relations. As firearms circulated and gradually made their way into the periphery, various measures were initiated by the colonial state, such as enforcing prohibitive laws and instituting surveillance structures to control and block the flow of firearms along the North-East Frontier. This article examines some of these complex processes, dynamics, and experiences that ensued through the circulation and diffusion of firearms on the North-East Frontier of British India.

scholarly journals Two Notes on Pylos and Sphacteria

1907 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 274-283
Author(s):  
W. C. Compton ◽  
H. Awdry
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Low Level ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Open Sea ◽  
The Hill ◽  
North End

Thucydides (iv. 36) describes the last phase of the long contest which led to the surrender of the 292 surviving Spartans on Sphacteria.They had gradually retired to the summit of the hill at the north end of the island,—an altitude of something under 500 feet, and were making their last stand in the neighbourhood of the παλαιὸν ἔπυμα mentioned by Thucydides, which had once defended this summit, and of which small fragments are yet to be seen. These fragments are still there, for since prehistoric times this practically waterless island has probably never had inhabitants except a few nomad goatherds.The ground,—working round west, north, east, south,—is as follows, and, the photographs reproduced will help to make it clear (Fig. 1, and Plan) To the S.W. is the long slope up which the Spartans had been slowly retiring from their camp on the low level in the centre of the island. To the west the hill falls, not very steeply, to a saddle; and from this and all sides except (as they thought) the east, the Spartans were exposed to attack; then comes a shoulder before the ground slopes away westward to the open sea.

scholarly journals II.—The Hill of Beath, a Volcanic Neck in Fife

1909 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
J. S. Grant Wilson ◽  
H. Brantwood Muff
Keyword(s):  
Intrusive Rock ◽  
Mining Operations ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Coal Measures ◽  
Carboniferous Limestone

The Hill of Beath, which lies 3 miles to the north-east of Dunfermline, Fife, is an isolated hill with steep, but rounded, contours, and rises fully 250 feet above the surrounding plateau. Whilst the hill itself consists of dark grey tuff, the rocks forming the plateau belong to the Coal-measures of the Carboniferous Limestone series. The latter are thrown into gentle anticlines and synclines, the dip on the limbs of the folds usually lying between 10 and 15 degrees. The outcrop of the tuff has the form of an ellipse, the long axis of which trends east and west and measures nearly 1,000 yards, whilst the breadth of the ellipse is rather more than 500 yards. The distribution of the outcrops of the Carboniferous rocks around the hill and the evidence from the coal workings show that the tuff is not interbedded with the sediments, but that it breaks through them somewhat like an intrusive rock. Sir Archibald Geikie recognized that the Hill of Beath was a volcanic neck, and this view has been confirmed by recent mining operations in a conclusive manner.

X.—Geology of the Outer Hebrides. Part III.—North Uist and Benbecula

1926 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Jehu ◽  
R.M. Craig
Keyword(s):  
Narrow Channel ◽  
Central Position ◽  
The South ◽  
North West ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Outer Hebrides ◽  
The Hill ◽  
North And South ◽  
Southern Extremity

Benbecula signifies “the hill of the fords,” and the island was so designated owing to the fact that there is on it only one hill of any prominence, and that it is connected with the larger islands to the north and south by fords passable only at low water. The origin of the name “Uist” is referred to in a previous communication.These islands occupy a central position in the Outer Hebrides, lying between South Uist and Harris. They are bounded on the west and north-west by the Atlantic Ocean; on the north-east by the Sound of Harris; on the east by the Little Minch, which at its narrowest part is about 16 miles broad; and on the south by a narrow channel separating Benbecula from South Uist. The area embraced in this communication extends from the Isle of Shillay in the north to the Isle of Wiay at the south-east corner of Benbecula, and includes not only the main islands of North Uist and Benbecula but also a number of smaller isles adjoining the main ones. Including the intervening channels, the total length from Shillay in the north to the southern extremity of Benbecula is about 28 miles.

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