Between country and city: fluid spaces of provincial administrative towns in nineteenth-century Bengal

Abstract

ABSTRACT:By looking at the spatial cultures of nineteenth-century provincial administrative towns in colonial Bengal, this article problematizes notions of city, town or country and their relationships. It looks at colonial provincial governance within a framework that extended far beyond ‘formal’ governmental administrative spaces and thus engages with the complex overlap between categories like work, home and leisure. It argues that provincial urbanism in colonial Bengal defied clear-cut categories and in effect created a ‘fluid’ spatial culture, which was distinct from, but also calibrated between, metropolitan centres on the one hand and a vast rural hinterland on the other.