 | Communication and Colonialism in Eastern India: Bihar, 1760s–1880s Subjects: Communication and traffic -- India -- Bihar -- History; Communication and traffic -- Great Britain -- Colonies -- History; Great Britain -- Colonies -- Administration -- History -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Colonies -- Administration -- History -- 19; Through a regional focus on Bihar between the 1760s and 1880s, 'Communication and Colonialism in Eastern India' reveals the shifting and contradictory nature of the colonial state's policies and discourses on communication. The volume explores the changing relationship between trade, transport and mobility in India, as evident in the trading and mercantile networks operating at various scales of the economy. Of crucial importance to this study are the ways in which knowledge about roads and routes was collected through practices of travel, tours, surveys, and map-making, all of which benefited the state in its attempts to structure a regime that would regulate 'undesirable' forms of mobility. Nitin Sinha is a research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies) in Berlin. His current work focuses on the socio-historical dimensions of the River Ganga in India. He has published on issues of transport and the 'Mutiny' of 1857, mobility and criminality, and railway labour movements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial India. |
