“Without His Consent?”: Marriage and Women's Migration in Colonial India

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 77-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samita Sen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
General Assumption ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
The Family ◽  
Urban Worker ◽  
The Village

An examination of the diverse patterns of women's migration challenges abiding stereotypes of Indian history: the urban worker as a male “peasant-proletariat” and women as inhabiting a timeless rural past. When men opted for circulation between town and country, wives and children undertook the actual labor of cultivation for the survival of “peasant-proletariat” households. Men retained their status as heads of the family and, even though absent for long periods, their proprietary interests in the village. Yet towards the end of the nineteenth century, many unhappy, deserted, and barren wives, widows, and other women were able to escape to the burgeoning cities of Calcutta and Bombay and the coal mines, where they experienced new processes of social and economic marginalization.Much attention has been given to women's migration to overseas colonies and the Assam teagardens. Such migration has been seen as doubly negative, not only harnessing women to the exploitative contract regimes, but also subjecting them to sexual violation. A general assumption is that women were deceived, decoyed and even “kidnapped,” since there was no possibility of “voluntary” migration by women. Such a view of women's recruitment was produced by a variety of interests opposed to women's, especially married women's, migration, and eventually influenced the colonial state to legally prohibit, in 1901, women's “voluntary” migration to Assam plantations. This provision was an explicit endorsement of male claims on women's labor within the family.

scholarly journals A Tryst with the Tribes: A Comparison of State – Tribe Relations in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagnik Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
The Relationship

It is well-known that the relationship between the colonial State and the Tribes in nineteenth century India had been particularly conflict-ridden and interrupted by periodic ‘insurrections’ or rebellions. This paper studies the relationship between the pre-colonial Mughal State and its tribes and juxtaposes it against the colonial state’s management of the Khonds and the Santals, and explores what can be known about the nature of the nineteenth century ‘Indian’ state that is fundamentally different from its earlier avatars. Employing police reports and legal court files, this paper concludes, that the uniqueness of the colonial State lay in its unilateral interactions with the tribes that is a product of the transition from a state that exercised ‘narrative sovereignty’ over its territories to one that aspired to enforce ‘actual sovereignty.’ This categorical change in the nature of the state, this paper argues, employing Marshall Sahlins’ ‘possible theory of history,’ caused structural changes in the tribe-state relationship—the breakdown of which then became irreconcilable and the tribes reacted by performing rituals such as the meriah and the bitlaha which now assumed political functions. These rituals in their novel incarnation earned the label of ‘insurrection.’

Gender, Family, and the Policing of the ‘Criminal Tribes’ in Nineteenth-Century North India

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1669-1711
Author(s):  
JESSICA HINCHY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Period ◽  
North India ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Central Target ◽  
Northern India ◽  
The Family ◽  
And Gender

AbstractIn the South Asian setting, the fields of gender history and family history are still predominantly concerned with relatively elite social groups. Few studies have examined issues of gender and the family in the history of Dalit, low-caste, and socially marginalized communities, especially those that were labelled ‘criminal tribes’ from the mid-nineteenth century on. This article explores the ways in which gender patterned criminalized communities’ experiences of everyday colonial governance under Part I of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) in the first two decades that it was enforced in northern India. In this early period, the colonial government did not closely regulate marriage practices, domestic arrangements, or the gendered organization of labour within communities categorized as ‘criminal tribes’. Nevertheless, notions of sexuality and gender underlay colonial knowledge of the ‘criminal tribes’, which emerged in dialogue with middle-class Indian gender and caste politics. Moreover, the family unit was the central target of the CTA surveillance and policing regime, which aimed to produce ‘industrious’ families. Officially endorsed forms of labour had complex implications for criminalized communities in the context of North Indian gender norms and strategies of social mobility. Gender power dynamics also shaped criminalized peoples’ interpersonal, embodied interactions with British and Indian colonial officials on an everyday basis. Meanwhile, different forms of leverage and evasion were open to men and women to cope with their criminalization and so the colonial state was experienced in highly gendered ways.

Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904)

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Olivier Walusinski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Family Environment ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Married Life ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Family ◽  
Key Events ◽  
The Village

This chapter clarifies the toponymic origin of Georges Gilles de la Tourette’s family name, describes the family environment in which he grew up, details his married life, and also introduces his children. It presents also the key events in Gilles de la Tourette’s personal and family life together, giving some idea of how the provincial bourgeoisie lived in France during the nineteenth century. All of the new information in the chapter is based on family archives that were found in a museum in the village of Loudun, in western France. These archives have never before been used for historical study.

scholarly journals Plantation science: improving natural indigo in colonial India, 1860–1913

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
PRAKASH KUMAR
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
International Market ◽  
Natural Dye ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Metropolitan Government ◽  
Dye Industry

AbstractThis paper explores the transition to synthetic dyestuffs through a principal focus on developments within the last major holdout of the natural-dye industry, the blue colourant indigo. It starts by looking closely at existing practices of cultivation and manufacture of the natural dye in colonial India in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also develops a case study based on targeted efforts scientifically to improve plant-derived indigo in laboratories and experiment stations in colonial India and imperial England. Experts attempted to increase yields and enhance the purity of the natural dye to meet the competition of the cheaper and purer synthetic indigo launched on the international market in 1897 by two German firms, BASF and Hoechst. The paper explains the patronage of science by European planters, the colonial state and the metropolitan government and analyses the nature of science that emerged in the colonial–imperial nexus.

Master Tara Singh in Indian History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.S. Grewal
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Large Volume ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Comprehensive Study

This is the first comprehensive study of Master Tara Singh (1885–1967), placed in the wider context of Indian history. It is based on a large volume and variety of source materials in English and Punjabi, revealing many new facts, ideas, and perspectives, and questioning several assumptions. The book is divided into two parts, the first dealing with Master Tara Singh’s activity in colonial India with special reference to his patriotism and anti-British attitude, and the second part dealing with Master Tara Singh’s pursuit of a unilingual Punjab state, called the Punjabi Suba. What lends unity to the two parts is Master Tara Singh’s politics based on Sikh identity. It was a source of inspiration as well as confrontation with the colonial state and the Congress leadership, particularly Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Master Tara Singh played a key role in the partition of British Punjab and formation of a Punjabi-speaking state which were essentially in consonance with his view of Sikh interests. His vision of the Indian national state was fundamentally different from that of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress. Master Tara Singh stood firmly for a large measure of pluralism in free India. This book throws fresh light also on the freedom struggle, the Akali Movement, and the politics of partition.

Russian Peasant Views of City Life, 1861-1914

Slavic Review ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Alpern Engel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Migrant Women ◽  
World War ◽  
City Life ◽  
Stable Element ◽  
The Family ◽  
Peasant Women ◽  
The Village

In the decades following the emancipation of the serfs, increasing numbers of peasants left their native villages for cities and industrial centers, in response to a growing need for cash and declining opportunities to earn it at home. At least until World War I, the vast majority of these migrants were men; women were the more stable element in the village. In the words of one student of peasant life, women “cling to the family and the land, and need particularly unfavorable circumstances to compel them to move somewhere else.“ Nevertheless, as the nineteenth century drew to a close the economic circumstances that prompted peasant men to leave villages increasingly caused women to leave as well. Like their husbands, fathers and brothers, migrant women often chose urban destinations. At the turn of the twentieth century, there were 650 peasant women per 1,000 peasant men in Moscow, and 368 migrant peasant women for every 1,000 migrant peasant men in St. Petersburg; by 1910, the proportion in St. Petersburg had increased to 480 per 1,000.

Cannabis in Colonial India: Production, State Intervention, and Resistance in the Late Nineteenth-Century Bengali Landscape

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Cannabis Sativa ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Rural Producers

When approaching the subject of rural producers and their environments in nineteenth-century India, it is necessary to be mindful of the range of studies during the last 30 years or so that have emphasised the importance of resistance to colonial projects. These studies, most notably those published in the Subaltern Studies project (Guha 1982), have focused on the strategies and agendas of peasants in South Asia and have emphasized their importance in shaping rural developments and relationships during the period of British rule. This work has shown how these agendas and strategies often led to conflicts of interest with the colonial state. Importantly, however, these studies have insisted that resistance to colonial designs was not always expressed in confrontation and rebellion. Resistance could often be subtle, difficult to detect, localized, and small scale, coming in forms such as “foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage and so forth,” which have been called “the weapons of the weak” (Scott 1985: 29). Such perspectives are important in this study as it focuses on the ways in which Indian rural producers of hemp (Cannabis sativa) narcotics transformed their environments in the process of producing the drugs for the domestic market in the nineteenth century. Definitions of the various preparations of hemp varied from place to place, and indeed different officials and administrators would give differing accounts. The preparations that are mentioned might broadly be understood as follows: Ganja is the dried flower head of the Cannabis sativa variation of the hemp plant, which is mixed with tobacco and smoked, often in a chillum (clay pipe). Bhang is the ground leaves and stalks of the Cannabis sativa, mixed into a paste and drunk with milk and sugar or taken neat with black pepper. Charas is the dried, sticky exudation of the sativa, smoked with tobacco in a chillum. Majum is a green sweetmeat made with the ground leaves of the plant and mixed with butter, milk, and sugar and baked. Muddat is a preparation of hemp and opium. After a brief introduction to the hemp narcotics market in India during this period, the chapter will consider the modes of production in the rural areas of the main hemp products.

Keeping the master cool, every day, all day: Punkah-pulling in colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110645
Author(s):  
Ritam Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
Regulatory Functions

This article studies how the distribution of the work of punkah-pulling in European households and barracks of colonial India involved European masters making gradually multiplying claims on their servants’ labouring time and how these claims fared in practice. The laborious task of punkah-pulling in such establishments was often resisted by native servants on counts of caste, custom or simply exhaustion. In the context of such conflicts, this article tries to understand how the colonial state and its legal and regulatory functions mediated the contested terrain of domestic and service work over the nineteenth century. Over the latter half of this century, punkah-pulling became a separate occupation, even as this occupation slid down the hierarchy of service work and became a more pronounced target of recurring racial violence. Against this background, the article also tries to grapple with the material limits encountered by the regimes of work involved in the cheap, day-and-night conduct of punkah-pulling that eventually led up to the acceptance of mechanised alternatives.

The Poacher: A Study in Victorian Crime and Protest

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 825-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. V Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Rural Crime ◽  
Old People ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Village

A study of the Victorian poacher raises several points of interest for historians of nineteenth-century society. First, he was such an ordinary figure, an accepted and normal part of rural life. In recent works of oral history, old people recall just how important poaching had been for their predecessors, and for the family and village economy. An examination of the statistics of rural crime in the nineteenth century reveals that, together with theft, trespass, vagrancy and Poor Law offences, poaching offences absorbed a major share of the magistrates' time. For example, in 1843, one in four convictions in Suffolk were against the Game Laws, whilst in Norfolk over 2,000 poachers were fined or imprisoned in the years 1863–71. Landowners such as Lord Ashburnham of Battle in Sussex, and Lord Musters and Sutherland in the Midlands, fought a daily, and sometimes losing battle, against these people. In the second quarter of the century poaching was widely regarded as one of the fastest growing crimes in Britain, and, unlike arson, highway robbery, cattle, horse and sheep stealing, it continued to be a prominent and permanent part of the rural scene. Even in the 1880s and 1890s contemporaries were periodically shocked by the bitterness and violence which accompanied this particular criminal activity. A study of poaching, therefore, tells us a good deal about the secret world of the village and the labourer.

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