Colonial State Research Articles

Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa

Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa

Countless Blessings: A History of Childbirth and Reproduction in the Sahel

Countless Blessings: A History of Childbirth and Reproduction in the Sahel

Playing Politics with Epidemic: Bubonic Plague, Slum Clearance, and Party Politics in Colonial Lagos, 1924–1960

The management of the bubonic plague in colonial Lagos, Nigeria, unavoidably put the indigenous population at the receiving end of massive social disruptions. The impact of the control measures on the social and political temperament of the area with the reactions it elicited among the indigenous people is absent from the historiography of the bubonic plague in Lagos. This study draws upon primary sources (first-hand accounts and interviews) to provide insight into how residents in colonial Lagos grappled with the plague and the colonial state's attempts to control the epidemic and govern the city. The central argument of this paper is that at a time of growing nationalism among an increasingly politically conscious African educated class, public health measures adopted to control the bubonic plague only served to breed political unrest and intra-party antagonism that threatened the social thread of the city. Lagos political space provides us with the opportunity to study how medical issues became entangled with nationalist agitation. Evidence for the study was drawn from archival materials sourced from the National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan; the British National Archive, London; and oral interviews conducted in Lagos.

The Fiction of Doris Lessing: Re-Envisioning Feminism by Ratna Raman

Reviewed by: The Fiction of Doris Lessing: Re-Envisioning Feminism by Ratna Raman Carmen García-Navarro THE FICTION OF DORIS LESSING: RE-ENVISIONING FEMINISM, by Ratna Raman. New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2021. 317 pp. $76.50 hardback. The general theoretical approach offered in The Fiction of Doris Lessing: Re-envisioning Feminism by Ratna Raman applies feminist thinking to Doris Lessing's narrative work. The volume's structure comprises an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, all richly annotated, including a bibliography and index. The book's narrative unity allows readers to enjoy its subtleties, which are made with precision and acuity, and to explore the most significant advances made in the field of Lessing research in India. Raman refers to her own status as a woman, academic, and connoisseur of Lessing's works, beginning with her excitement as a young reader who discovered threads of connection to Lessing's writings, as both women writers grappled with a British colonial past. Against this background, Raman places Lessing as a significant figure in India's literary and cultural life. Raman's feminist perspective highlights Lessing's importance as a key writer in and outside of the European context, not only in terms of the development of form but also because her texts reflect her concern for a world that was vanishing. As Raman notes in her insightful introduction, Lessing witnessed the tensions of colonial and postcolonial relations in the country of her youth, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). These life circumstances gave Lessing the chance to observe and participate in the twentieth-century cultural landscape and, at the same time, exercise a critical distance from Eurocentric socio-political viewpoints—distance that became essential to her writing (p. 13). As Raman explains in the first chapter, entitled "Lessing and Feminism," the contributions of Lessing's position on feminism have been the subject of much critical debate, particularly since the publication of The Golden Notebook (1962). Lessing expressed a desire to break with an ancient structure that had been assimilated from many symbolic and material positions, a structure for which feminism was an obstacle (pp. 28-29). The first chapter also provides a brief history of Lessing's life in Zimbabwe, her family and love relations, her desire for education, and her need to write. With her move to London, Lessing carried the remnants of historical events such as World War I that had a lasting impact on her parents, the gradual fall of the British Empire and the colonial state, followed by the interwar period, the advent of World War II, and the emergence of a new world order. Thus, Raman's work springs from the need to revise and adjust old notions and reaffirm the place of writers like Lessing, who was a young woman asking for recognition from a specific postcolonial cultural and geographical space. [End Page 364] The second chapter of the book, entitled "The Interrogation of Liberal White Feminism," is devoted to Lessing's novel The Grass is Singing (1950) and examines the role of women in the context of African colonialism. According to Raman, this role needs to be reconsidered in light of the ambiguous stance of some white feminists who benefited from racial privilege despite having to be content with gendered limitations (p. 75). In this regard, the place of Asian, Indian, and Black women, who have been marginalized by a segment of feminism that has been slow to question the patriarchal, imperialist, and racist state's silence regarding them, is one of the concerns that white liberal feminism still needs to address (p. 89). The third chapter focuses on The Golden Notebook. Raman is drawn to Lessing's inquiries into the issues that women faced in mid-century politics, the knowledge they identified with, and the voices represented in the novel. She also emphasizes the importance of the foreword Lessing wrote for the 1971 edition, which focuses on how knowledge about women is created, shared, and received, as well as on the changes needed to ensure that women's authority is recognized. In Raman's view, Lessing drew on this authority when creating a "cultural matrix" composed of the five novels in The Children of Violence (1952...

Insurgent law: Bengal Regulation III and the Chin-Lushai expeditions (1872–1898)

AbstractThis article studies the adjudicatory practices deployed by colonial military and police forces during a series of punitive British expeditions in the eastern frontiers of British India and the northern reaches of British Burma, specifically the Lushai and Chin Hills in the late nineteenth century. It magnifies the lives, deaths, and afterlives of two ‘tribal’ chiefs of Lushai Hills. Among others, these figures were held responsible for a series of raids carried out in the settled British territories of the northeastern frontiers in the 1890s. After a few inconclusive skirmishes with the British expeditionary force, they were apprehended and imprisoned in a jail in Hazaribagh under the preventive detention act of Bengal Regulation III of 1818, which was reserved and designed to arrest political dissidents of the empire. After a few months, two of them, Liengpunga and Khalkam, were found hanging from the windows of their prison latrine. The British administration labelled these deaths as suicides and closed the cases. The article opens them up. In doing so, it narrates an oblique history of the Scheduled District Act of 1874 which removed hill districts from the jurisdictions of regular courts. By focusing on the historical imbrication of Bengal Regulation III of 1818 in the Scheduled District Act, the article highlights the punitive techniques embedded in the seeming protectionist impulse of the colonial state, something that persists in India's administration of the Northeast region. Closer to the concerns of this issue, it reflects on a legal genealogy of tribal subjects in South Asia.

Law's Indigenous Ethics by John Borrows (review)

Reviewed by: Law's Indigenous Ethics by John Borrows Keith Richotte Jr. (bio) Law's Indigenous Ethics by John Borrows University of Toronto Press, 2020 THERE IS MUCH (very understandable) rhetoric in Indigenous studies about decolonizing various institutions and structures. Yet guidance on how to go about decolonizing is far less abundant than the calls to do so. The very ambitiousness of such a project is matched only by its daunting nature. How does one go about the work of decolonization? Obviously many have sought to accomplish such ends in many contexts and have done so long before we had the language that we presently use in the academy. Nonetheless, chronicles of acts of resistance and calls for change far outnumber models for how to effectuate the type of change that would benefit the Indigenous world. Consequently, we are fortunate to have a scholar such as John Borrows to offer guidance as we continue to collectively try to figure it out. The prolific Borrows's new book, Law's Indigenous Ethics, should be read by anyone who is interested in how to think about the decolonization project in a practical, actionable way. Admittedly, to those only looking at the cover and a blurb it might seem to have a limited audience: it is a work about Canadian law and Aboriginal peoples, particularly the Anishinaabe. Yet this critical text can speak to a broad audience because it takes seriously the question of how we might strategize decolonizing efforts in the future. The legal cases and doctrine as well as the Canadian context are central to Borrows's argument, but they are not barriers to those whose work and region of study do not overlap. Borrows is an exceptionally skillful and gentle writer, and his wisdom will be obvious to anyone who is not intimidated by his framing devices. On the topic of framing devices, Borrows divides his text into seven chapters, each one thematically consistent with what the author describes as the "Seven Grandmother/Grandfather Teachings of the Anishinaabe" (14): Zaagi'idiwin (love), Debwewin (truth), Zoongide'ewin (bravery), Dabaadendizowin (humility), Nibwaakaawin (wisdom), Gwayakwaadiziwin (honesty), and Manaaji'idiwin (respect). By examining a legal question that is concerned with land through these lenses, Borrows demonstrates how and where it is possible to invert the colonially imposed structures of law and [End Page 146] legal reasoning to offer Indigenous legal reasoning that can lead to a more just, coherent, and integrated body of law for everyone involved. This is not to suggest that Borrows naively asserts that the Seven Grandmother/Grandfather Teachings will cure the Indigenous world or the colonial state of their own accord. Rather, he makes a more sophisticated and reasonable argument that the Seven Teachings offer another mode of legal reasoning to solve modern problems. Each chapter demonstrates how this can be accomplished. Nor is Borrows unaware that the Seven Teachings are criticized in some parts of the Indigenous world as modern inventions that are insufficiently connected to past practices or philosophical conceptions. As is his way, Borrows converts this alleged weakness into a strength. He forcefully demonstrates both that the decolonization effort must first begin at home and the possibilities that are available by asserting an active Indigenous legal philosophy. "Indigenous law can be a living and dynamic force if not tethered to what is regarded as being integral to aboriginal communities prior to European contact or sovereignty. The Seven Grandmother/Grandfather Teachings could broaden our legal imagination if they are regarded as current expressions of Indigenous authority in the modern world, regardless of whether their origin is old or new" (15). Law's Indigenous Ethics is an excellent book that has many uses. A terrific text for courses in Canadian law, comparative law, and comparative Indigenous problem solving, it perhaps most usefully offers a proactive vision for anyone interested in decolonization efforts throughout the Indigenous world. [End Page 147] Keith Richotte KEITH RICHOTTE JR., Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, is associate justice of the Turtle Mountain Court of Appeals and associate professor of American studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Copyright © 2022 Regents of the University of Minnesota

The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border, 1846–1962 by Kyle J. Gardner

Reviewed by: The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border, 1846–1962 by Kyle J. Gardner Benjamin Holt The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border, 1846–1962. By Kyle J. Gardner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xxi + 280 pp. ISBN 978-1-108-84059-0. $99.00 (hardcover). A central aim of Kyle Gardner's The Frontier Complex is to demonstrate how colonial border-making shaped ideas about territory that created legacies still felt in contemporary Asia (p. xvi). Supplementary ambitions are to bring Ladakh into greater focus within histories of South Asia (p. 20) and amalgamate top-down narratives of border-making with ground-level experiences. The book delivers on these aims. To do so, Gardner traces the history of the frontier to reveal how colonial concerns with geography and security created the foundation for the postcolonial borderland. Thus, the book rejects the stasis of borders in favor of an in-depth temporal analysis of developments in the northwest Himalaya, with primary focus on Ladakh. A core argument made by Gardner is that the creation of a borderland is not merely a routine exercise in map-making. Rather, the process is critical for understanding ways that "geography, politics, and power" are understood (p. 2). When this historical process is recognized, notable insights follow. For instance, Gardner is particularly keen to stress the ramifications of the "new, geopolitical way of seeing space" that dominated British thinking from the late nineteenth century (p. 184). The focus on security was propelled by colonial anxieties and this—alongside the inability to properly demarcate a clear boundary—produced lasting effects. This conundrum proved to be a key factor behind the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the temporal endpoint of the book. [End Page 532] The notion of the "frontier complex"—that is the various practices used by colonial officials, from surveys and mapping, to construction, information, and regulation (p. 21)—provides the framework for analysis. The first chapter covers the diverse ways the region was "seen" before the British arrival, suggesting that "Ladakh" was—in a sense—a colonial construct. The second then suggests the colonial state developed both natural and political understandings of the region but failed to construct a "scientific frontier" regardless.1 This desire to politicize geography is a continuing theme in chapters three and four as roadbuilding and colonial texts take centre stage. The former was a conduit of imperial security; the latter reflected the colonial vision of territory. Chapters five and six then delve into the rise of geopolitical thought from the 1880s, as colonial anxieties clashed with previous ideas about exploration and commercialization. The final chapter then confronts the postcolonial legacies of the frontier complex. A key strength of The Frontier Complex is its advancement beyond top-down narratives of border-making to continually examine groundlevel interactions with colonial visions of space. For instance, chapter four provides a compelling overview about how lopchak and chaba—essentially tributes paid between Ladakh and Lhasa—proved problematic for colonial governance and prestige (pp. 158–165). This approach is made possible by a rich and diverse source base. The only issue this reviewer would highlight relates to the 1962 war. Considering how heavily it weighs upon the book, the immediate prelude to war is mostly overlooked (pp. 248–250). A more concerted explanation for the midand short- term dynamics could be provided, narrated alongside the longer-term structural factors that Gardner's book reveals. This would help to recalibrate traditional narratives of the conflict, providing more convincing context for the diplomatic failures leading to 1962, of which Gardner is critical (p. 61). Despite this relatively minor area of contention, The Frontier Complex is a richly researched work that provides significant insight for several fields. This is clearest for borderlands studies and adds to a growing repertoire of historically focused analyses in recent years.2 [End Page 533] Viewing borders as something more than "hard territorial lines" is a clear point of departure for the subfield, but Gardner's book reinforces the benefits of understanding the temporal development of the borderland to reveal how spaces are conditioned by the changing interests of associated polities...

Territorial Rights for Individuals, States, orPueblos? Answers from Indigenous Land Struggles in Colonial Spanish America

Who should have rights to territory? Dominant political theories hold that either individuals or state-based groups (states, nations, or state-based civic peoples) have foundational territorial rights. However, they cannot accommodate some Indigenous peoples’ claims that the land should be subject neither to private ownership nor to sovereign state control. Given these claims, some scholars have recently revised these theories to mediate between state jurisdiction and private property. But those revisions have thus far neglected the views of Indigenous peoples who did not experience Anglo-American settler colonialism. This article therefore examines contemporary territorial rights theories in light of the experience of colonial Spanish America. Using sixteenth-century documents in which Indigenous communities conceptualized and asserted their rights to territory, historical evidence of political struggles between these communities and the colonial state, and interpretations of colonial legal thinkers from the seventeenth century (particularly Juan de Solórzano Pereira), I argue that, in addition to individuals and state-based groups, we should consider another subject of territorial rights:pueblos,or grounded communities.

The impact of precolonial political centralisation on local development: Ghana’s paradox

ABSTRACT I investigate the impact of precolonial political centralisation (PPC) on local development in Ghana. Accounting for the potential endogeneity associated with the emergence of political centralisation, I find that PPC has a strong negative impact on local development. Further, PPC does not significantly correlate with the provision of local public goods. These results are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks and a wealth of controls at a fine unit. Two mechanisms plausibly explain these findings. First, I show that past colonial public investments, which still significantly determine contemporary development outcomes in Ghana, disfavoured politically centralised regions. Second, I argue that in centralised areas colonial rule might have empowered despotic local patrons who served the interest of the colonial state at the expense of local development.

Reordering languages: Persian and the colonial state in India, c.1820–1873

ABSTRACT Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1835 minute on Indian education is widely held to be representative of the views which underpinned the English East India Company’s replacement of Persian with English as the official language of administration in India in 1837, and the promotion of English and Indian vernacular languages as part of colonial educational policy. Yet, it is often overlooked that Macaulay failed to even mention Persian in his condemnation of “oriental learning”, focusing his attention solely on the shortcomings of Sanskrit and Arabic. Macaulay’s omission of Persian is telling: despite its centrality to Mughal rule and the political transactions of the East India Company alike, Persian did not fit easily into emergent colonial formulations regarding Indian languages and their relationships with particular locales, ethnicities and religions. Through an examination of colonial discussions regarding Indian education, this article argues that the complicated, often contradictory, status of Persian in educational discourse allowed the language to elude definitive categorisation and to survive in government schools and colleges during the nineteenth century. It further suggests that as multilingual cultures were formalised and reconfigured within the domain of colonial education, the continued presence of Persian alongside vernaculars such as Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali at colonial institutions both shaped – and disturbed – their identification as viable modern languages.

Rebuilding public authority in Uganda dualist theory, hybrid social orders and democratic statehood

Conflicted African societies are confronting a crisis of public authority caused by the ethnic, sectarian and class conflicts generated by their ongoing transitions from authoritarian to liberal democratic institutional systems. Most have introduced competitive elections which have rarely produced stable and inclusive political outcomes, discrediting the dominant liberal democratic state-building agenda. We draw on classical ‘dualist’ and ‘new institutionalist’ theorists to explain these failures and suggest alternative strategies. They attribute these tensions to the co-existence of contradictory liberal and illiberal rules and cultural systems that interact in dissonant ways in hybrid social orders, and they enable us to develop a ‘society-centric historical methodology’ that attributes their ability or inability to achieve democratic statehood to the ability of their regimes to build inclusive and hybrid political settlements and organisational structures that reconcile the competing demands of modern and traditional elites and subordinate classes. We then demonstrate the utility of this approach by using it to explain Uganda’s transition from a stable, but dualistic colonial state, to a predatory dictatorship and then to a relatively successful competitive autocracy.

Decolonizing conservation? Indigenous resurgence and buffalo restoration in the American West

There has been a recent surge of interest in “decolonizing” conservation and natural resource management fields. Most of this scholarship, however, speaks to colonialism on a global scale and does not address conservation within modern settler colonial states such as the United States and Canada. This project focuses on the reintroduction of buffalo (bison) in the American West as an example of how even conservation efforts that purport to include, value, and share Indigenous perspectives can ultimately uphold settler colonial relations of power. Using an Indigenous mixed-methodology approach, it interrogates the discursive construction of buffalo as “America's great conservation success story” and highlights the ways in which conservation has historically worked to support colonial projects of Indigenous erasure and dispossession. Some contemporary buffalo restoration projects seek to include Indigenous people as stakeholders and/or collaborators with unique cultural interests in buffalo, but these efforts do not always embody the material shift in power relations that Indigenous scholars have identified as a key component of decolonization. For Indigenous people, buffalo are more than a keystone species with cultural import; they are relatives whose well-being is deeply entwined with our own. For landscape-scale buffalo restoration projects to engage in decolonization, they must seek to not only repair the harm done to tribal nations through buffalo eradication but also work to support Indigenous resurgence by transforming structures of power.

Samburu pastrolists’ utilisation of vital resources for survival in colonial Kenya

This study examines the resources vital for the survival of the Samburu pastoral people in pre-colonial Kenya and their use. The study covers the period from 1895 to 1961. The study discussed the Samburu traditional land tenures systems and exploitation of resources. It examined Samburu subsistence production. This study used two theories to achieve the set objectives. It utilised Carl Marx’s theory of political economy, which postulates that it is common ends that govern human relations. It is economic structure also referred to as substructure that provides the basis for the society on which the superstructure is built upon. The constituents of the superstructure are found on the analysis to reflect the interest of the dominant class. The study also uses Articulation theory of producing modes of production as advanced by Lonsdale and Bruce. Articulation theory is relevant to the study as it links the Samburu pastoralist pre-capitalist subsistence system of production to British Colonial State capitalist system of production. This study used both primary and secondary sources. The method selected to carry out this study was qualitative research method. The semi-structured questions were used in the interview. Data was analysed, categorized according to topics and subtopics. It was interpreted, written down and finally presented. The research findings will contribute to the historiography of pastoralism in Kenya.

Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's Gardiennes d'images

Archiving the Algerian Revolution in Zineb Sedira's <i>Gardiennes d'images</i>

City of ‘Red Assassins’? Crime, Control, and Resistance in Colonial Lahore

Abstract This article documents an overlooked aspect of ‘crime as resistance to colonialism’ challenging colonial authorities in Lahore: the activities of Lahore’s little-known Society of Red Assassins, who led an anti-colonial ‘Car Burning Movement’ in the interwar period. Such so-called ‘socialist criminals’ engaged in innovative spectral violence by targeting capitalists and colonial institutions and were proclaimed ‘Public Enemy number 1’ by the colonial state. Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources, this investigation illuminates the world of revolutionary politics in colonial Lahore, part of a global history of anti-colonial resistance.

Settler colonial regulation of bigamous marriage across the Israeli/Palestinian border

ABSTRACT This article examines how settler colonial states selectively enforce the law to pursue the goals of land acquisition and demographic control, focusing on Israel’s response to cross-border polygamy as practiced by Bedouins in Israel. Based on archival research and extensive textual analysis of policy debates within the Israeli authorities during the 1980s, it uncovers the selective enforcement of bigamy laws in cases involving Palestinian women, also exploring how the state manipulates ‘security’ and ‘demographic’ concerns. These manipulations are a manifestation of state power, which is applied similarly to all Palestinians across the Israeli/Palestinian border.

War in the Mountains: Peasant Society and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 1918–1958

In this deeply researched and ambitious book, Neil MacMaster examines the neglected history of peasant resistance to French colonialism in Algeria's Chelif Valley. War in the Mountains upends the scholarly consensus that has attributed a politically inert and reactive character to the Algerian peasantry, illuminating their central role in the struggle for independence. MacMaster dismantles the consensus view across four sections and twenty chapters, giving readers an unprecedented look at the kinship units, political organizations, and shared histories that together shaped peasant resistance in the valley. Here, there was no need for urban revolutionaries to “awaken” the ignorant peasantry; peasant communities in the surrounding Dahra and Ouarsenis mountains had been organizing mutual aid and nationalist propaganda networks for decades prior to the arrival of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in 1956. When the Algerian Revolution finally came, these rural networks formed a base of support without which revolutionary forces could not have prevailed.War in the Mountains exemplifies just how much groundbreaking work can yet be done with colonial state archives. It is a truly social history that examines the critical—but often overlooked—kinship units that structured rural life in the Chelif Valley: the extended household (ayla) and the fraction (bocca), which were assemblies composed of the men in each ayla. By tracing the histories of individual fractions across decades, MacMaster identifies a means with which peasants preserved their communal solidarity and traditional social practices through years of land expropriation and dislocation. In the “native reserves” (communes mixtes) where most peasants lived, fraction patriarchs were often the sole links connecting the rural population to the colonial state. Absentee headmen (caïds) and French agents relied on these fraction leaders for local intelligence, offering access to state resources in exchange for their cooperation. As this system fell into crisis during the Great Depression, fractions and village councils (djemâa) coalesced into what would become a mass resistance movement. The fraction—a precolonial unit of rural social life—thus formed the organizational core through which peasants mobilized for a postcolonial future.The first three parts of the book chart the “terminal decline” of French rule in Algeria and the subsequent rise of the FLN “counter-state” that overtook it (254). Caught in an irreconcilable antagonism between the conservative defenders of the commune mixte system and reformers bent on modernization, the colonial state in Algeria underwent cycles of sputtering reform followed by reactionary backlash and repression. The constricted spaces that these cycles created for peasant political expression were never adequate to legitimize French rule, but they did provide a crucial medium for the introduction of mass electoral politics to the villages of the Chelif. Newly elected village councils operated as counterweights to corrupt French officials, compensating for the absence of colonial state administration with religious and kinship-based mutual aid networks. As revolutionary violence escalated, the survival of communist, Messalist, or Frontiste cells in the region depended on their ability to affect a “juncture” between themselves and the “dormant anti-colonialism of peasant society” expressed in these village councils (480). MacMaster contends that the FLN ultimately prevailed here because it offered a revolutionary program that was most responsive to the values and concerns of the peasantry.The final section of the text reassesses Opération Pilote, an ambitious counterinsurgency plan formulated by the anthropologist Jean Servier. With Pilote, Servier promised an ethnographic “hearts and minds” strategy—built upon political reforms and vast economic development initiatives—that would win over the region's peasant population. Military and civilian leaders soon hailed the operation as a success to be emulated throughout Algeria, but the book reveals stark truths that undermine this sanguine assessment. On the ground in the Dahra and Ouarsenis, the French presence largely continued as one of underadministration punctuated by catastrophic violence. Servier's ethnography also quickly fell out of favor with French officers, replaced by a simplistic program of sloganeering and propaganda derived from the field of behavioral psychology. Moreover, the FLN remained superior to the French in providing basic services and security to the Chelif peasantry. Pilote and its “successes” have been a staple of counterinsurgency literature for decades; MacMaster offers a necessary and overdue corrective to these accounts that dwells on the self-defeating brutality counterinsurgency practitioners unleashed on the very peasants they were supposed to be winning over.By positioning peasants at the center of Algeria's revolutionary struggle, War in the Mountains compels scholars to reconsider the balance of forces driving the country's independence and subsequent state formation. It also establishes a comparative research agenda grounded in an attentiveness to enduring structures of rural life that promises to influence the field for years to come. Accessibly written, albeit dense in its argumentation, this text will make for compelling reading in advanced undergraduate and graduate-level seminars.

The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border, 1846–1962

At a moment when India and China are clashing over their borders once again, this book is a timely examination of the “scientific” practices deployed by the British colonial state in India through the course of the long nineteenth century to bring those borders into existence. In particular, it details the mapping of the region of the northwestern Himalayas, with Ladakh at its center, that led to its transformation from a crossroads of economic, political, and cultural exchange to an imperial frontier to be policed and enforced. The book argues that imperial attempts at mapping the region and demarcating borderlines within it were only partially successful, leaving behind a colonial legacy that the postcolonial states inherited and continue to wrestle with. Not only has this legacy embittered relations between the two neighbors, but perhaps most poignantly, it has rendered the once-prosperous entrepôt of Ladakh into “a fractured and disputed borderland” (3).The most interesting aspect of this book is its discussion of the emergence of the sciences of governance and geopolitics in the context of border-making practices. The colonial state's utilization of the tools provided by the emergent discipline of geography to transform indigenous notions of space into territory that could be physically rendered on a map was preceded and accompanied by numerous attempts to survey and collect information about these spaces. This, in turn, generated a slew of manuals, such as gazetteers, which presented this information about the newly mapped territories in great detail and served as tools to more effectively govern and control them. As intelligence-gathering on the frontiers intensified and more resources were expended on it, so did the desire to regulate the border itself, through road-building and other such activities. These interrelated projects gave rise to geopolitics, a new way of thinking that combined geographical information with territory and security. Knowledge of rivers, mountains, watersheds, and other such natural resources was rendered critical to the formation and maintenance of states, particularly on their frontiers.The irony of this geopolitical project, the book demonstrates, was that it failed in the very laboratory that was crucial to its birth—the northwestern Himalayas—where it was unable to draw a single line through the Aksai Chin that would demarcate a clear border between India and China. This was not from lack of trying, and the story of the repeated attempts to do so forms a large part of the book. The individuals involved in this project—besides the British surveyors, cartographers, adventurers, and spies—were the “trans-frontier men,” as the book refers to them. These men regularly traversed the emergent frontier and included highly skilled Indian pundits who drew on indigenous knowledge to assist in surveying and mapping, as well as Yarkandi and Ladakhi officials, traders, and pony drivers, among others. It is here that the book misses an opportunity to give readers a more textured sense of these individuals themselves, their life histories, and how they navigated the new political landscape while shaping the emergent science of geopolitics.The most significant victim of this project of imperial boundary-making and its postcolonial legacies, the book illustrates well, has been Ladakh, which was a part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir during the colonial period, then became a part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in independent India, and since 2019 has been a union territory ruled directly by the Indian central government. While on the one hand it has been caught up in two geostrategic conflicts—the struggle between China and India on their borders as well as the dispute between India and Pakistan over the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir—on the other, it has come to occupy an increasingly ambiguous and marginalized position within the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and India as a whole. As the book demonstrates, ever since Ladakh was territorialized and its territory became central to the imperial frontier and later the border of the nation state, its inhabitants have been rendered into not much more than peripheral actors to be surveilled and controlled in the name of imperial and national security.The Frontier Complex is an engaging account of the confluence of geographical knowledge, definitions of territory, and ideas of security in the creation and maintenance of imperial borders in the nineteenth century, which have had profound implications for the relationships among states into the twenty-first century. It is thus a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the antecedents of these relationships and what continues to drive them at the contemporary moment.

Muslim Minority Against Islamic Nation: The Shias of British India and the Demand for Pakistan, 1940–45

This article analyses the relationship between British colonialism and Islamic sectarianism, and its consequent impact on the Shias, the largest Muslim minority in British India. In the critical decade leading up to independence and partition in 1947, politics in British India were dominated by the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. However, leading Shia organizations were opposed to the League’s idea of an Islamic nation and supported India’s independence without partition. Instead, they demanded that the British recognize the Shia as a Muslim minority, and thereby confer statutory protections from Sunni domination. The British government arbitrarily and unjustly ignored Shia entreaties for constitutional protections. Imperial realpolitik required the colonial state to acknowledge the Muslim League as the sole political representative of all Muslims, thus, rendering Pakistan a fait accompli. The intersection of the colonial government’s political calculations with the League’s political ambitions compelled both to discard the Shias. This study of the complex issue of minorities and their uncertain position in the nation promised for all Muslims has relevance for current debates on the nation and nationalism, on minorities and their rights, on sectarianism and majoritarianism, and on the politics of identity.

Across Time, Space, and Matter

Across Time, Space, and Matter